Two killed and 10 injured in knife attack at primary school in China

Police say woman, 45, used fruit knife to carry out stabbing attack in Jiangxi province

At least two people were killed and 10 injured after a knife-wielding woman attacked a primary school in Jiangxi province in China on Monday.

The 45-year-old suspect reportedly used a fruit knife during the stabbing attack at the Mingde elementary school in the town of Wenfang in Guixi.

Police said the woman, identified only by her second name Pan, has been detained.

It is unclear if any students were among those killed or injured.

The school was evacuated following the stabbing attack, according to The Beijing News, a state-owned newspaper.

Parents expressed shock and fear over the incident, with some reporting a lack of communication from the school.

“I received the news at noon and I was very shocked,” one parent who spoke on the condition of anonymity told BBC News.

“My child is in the fifth grade and very young and has safely arrived home, but the school has not informed us of anything and has kept everything hidden. I am going back to comfort my child and to find out what exactly happened.”

Police said four of the injured persons suffered non-life-threatening injuries while the other six suffered minor injuries.

China has reported a number of knife attacks over the past year.

Two people were killed and several injured after a suspected knife attack at the Zhenxiong County People’s Hospital in Zhaotong city, in the southwest of the country, earlier this month. The state news agency Xinhua reported that there were more than 10 casualties in what it described as a “vicious assault”.

In August last year, a knife-wielding man with a history of mental illness killed two people and injured seven at a residential complex in Yunnan province.

A month before that, six people, including three children, were fatally stabbed at a kindergarten in Guangdong province.