Perilous Times
14 September 2011 Last updated at 05:16 ET
Axe attack in Chinese city of Gongyi kills six
Police van at the scene of the attack in Gyongi on 14 September
2011 Local media reports said that the attack happened in a street
close to a kindergarten
A man armed with an axe has killed two young girls and four adults
in a Chinese city, media reports say.
The attack happened early on Wednesday on a street near a
kindergarten in Gongyi city, Henan province.
A 30-year-old local farmer, who is suspected of being mentally
ill, has been detained, officials said.
The incident is the latest in a spate of similar attacks across
China, several of which have targeted schools and young children.
One local media report said that the group in Gyongi had been
taking their children to nursery school when the attack happened.
Four people died at the scene and two more later in hospital,
local officials said in a statement.
Suspect Wang Hongbin "has a history of mental health illness", it
said.
Social change
In 2010 there were a series of attacks in which lone individuals
broke into Chinese schools to attack students.
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In one attack in March 2010 in the city of Ninping, community
doctor Zheng Minsheng stabbed eight young children to death. He
was executed for the crime one month later.
Two months later, seven children and two adults were hacked to
death at a kindergarten in Hanzhong city by an attacker who later
killed himself.
Last month eight children were hurt when an employee at a
child-care centre for migrant workers in Shanghai slashed them
with a knife.
The attacks have triggered calls for heightened security at
schools and kindergartens, and sparked debate over what caused
them.
The BBC's Damian Grammaticas, in Beijing, says they have focussed
attention on the growing social stresses in a society that is
changing fast as it pursues rapid economic growth, and on the
serious lack of care for those with mental health problems in
China.
Two years ago a study published in the journal The Lancet
estimated that around 17% of Chinese adults, 173m people, may
suffer from mental disorders.
Yet fewer than one in ten had ever sought treatment and even for
those who had, there were almost no free facilities to treat them.
Last year China's Premier Wen Jiabao said the attacks had
deep-seated causes including social conflicts that China must
address.
And the government ordered Chinese media to limit reporting of the
school killings amid fears some may have been copycat attacks, our
correspondent adds.