Beijing, May 13: A dispute over property has emerged as a possible reason that a man hacked seven kindergarten children and two adults to death in northern China.
Neighbours in Shaanxi province reported seeing a heated argument on Wednesday between the suspected attacker, Wu Huanming, and the woman who ran the Shengshui Temple kindergarten in Nanzheng county of Hanzhong, before he allegedly attacked her with a meat cleaver and then went on to attack the children.
“I saw him holding a knife up in his right hand, I ran out, there was shouting everywhere but nobody heard because it was raining,” Li Yufen, a Nanzheng county resident, told the Reuters news agency, adding that the few neighbours who gathered had retreated back into their homes.
“The killer walked straight past me, he glanced at me but walked on and I closed the door and stayed inside.”
Wu Huanming, 48, the owner of the two-storey building with a walled, concrete courtyard, wanted the kindergarten to vacate the property when the lease ran out in April, the state-run Xinhua news agency said.
The kindergarten owner, Wu Hongying, 50, wanted to keep the school running until the summer.
Toddlers attacked
Wu hacked five boys and two girls to death, and also killed Wu Hongying and her 80-year-old mother, before returning home and committing suicide, Xinhua said.
Eleven other children were hospitalised for injuries and a doctor said children as young as three were among the victims.
Wednesday’s attack was the sixth on schoolchildren in China since March, prompting calls for more security at schools and raising questions about the social tensions that underlie China’s rapid economic changes.
The assault occurred despite heightened security countrywide, with gates and cameras installed at some schools and additional police and guards posted at entrances.
China’s public security ministry has also vowed a “strike hard” campaign against attackers.
On Wednesday, local media said the authorities had detained several persons suspected of harbouring intentions of school attacks, but did not elaborate on what evidence.
Al Jazeera’s Melissa Chan, reporting from near the kindergarten in Shaanxi province, said the authorities had also pulled almost all news about Wednesday’s attack from local media, in part to prevent copycat killings.
There was a real worry that people were starting to take this route to attract attention to their grievances, our correspondent said.
But there could also be fear of backlash against the government, who was supposed to be protecting schools after the previous attacks.
—Agencies