China Kindergarten Stabbing: At Least 14 Children Injured By Woman

A woman wielding a kitchen knife attacked at least 14 children at a kindergarten in China on Friday morning, police said.

Chongqing City Banan District police said the 39-year-old assailant, identified only by her surname Liu, used the knife to attack the children as they walked back to class after their morning exercises at Yudong New Century Kindergarten at around 9.30 a.m. local time Friday (9.30 p.m. EDT Thursday).

Videos and photos, which were shared on social media, showed small children bleeding from severe cuts to their faces at the entrance of the kindergarten. They were being escorted by adults, while many onlookers watched. One video showed a child whose head was bandaged being pushed on a gurney.

The woman was dragged away by the police. Some videos showed angry parents beating the woman, who was surrounded by the police.

Warning: The following story contains photos and videos that might be disturbing for some reader.

The police said the victims of the attack were taken to the hospital while the guards and the staff at the kindergarten restrained the woman, and added they were looking into the incident. She was taken into custody soon after. Other details, like the full name of the woman, and the possible motive behind the attack were not revealed.

According to Channel News Asia, violent crime in China was rare when compared to many other countries, especially in the major cities of the nation where the security was extremely tight. In recent years, there has been a series of knife and ax attacks mostly targeting children, it added.

The report said such attacks were mostly blamed on people with mental illness or who have personal grievances. Since gun control was extremely strict in China, knives were mostly used in such attacks.

Xia Yang, a Chongqing resident, told CNN the attack shocked the residents of the city, which was a metropolis of some 30 million people. According to residents who were living near the kindergarten, the facility did not have any outdoor space for the children to play at, and used a local public park to conduct morning exercises for the children.

"It happened when the children were entering the school gate ... The attacker just ran at them with a knife. The teachers were dumbstruck," Zhang Jing, a resident who lives close to the school, said. He said people who were out shopping for groceries in the morning had tried to intervene and stop the attack.

Zhang said he was increasingly skeptical of the government's ability to look after his own daughter after the knife attack and recent scandals over faulty medicine for children.

"It is terrifying. The vaccines are faulty, the food is faulty ... and right now even the security is problematic," he told the CNN.