Eight killed in knife attack at Chinese college
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Eight people were killed and 17 wounded in a knife attack Saturday at a college in eastern China, the latest in a string of grisly crimes to unsettle the country. Police in the city of Yixing said the attack at the Wuxi Vocational Institute of Arts and Technology was carried out by a student who hadn’t graduated after failing an exam.
They gave the alleged attacker’s surname as Xu and said he confessed to the crime following his arrest at the college. The attack comes just days after a 62-year-old man plowed an SUV into a crowd at a sports stadium in the city of Zhuhai in southern China, killing 35 and injuring dozens more. That attack drew a rare public response from Chinese leader Xi Jinping, who ordered authorities across the country to learn from the incident to ensure public safety and social stability.
In the wake of Xi’s remarks, China’s Ministry of Public Security held a meeting in Beijing, vowing to guard against “extreme cases" with utmost vigilance and to help “resolve conflicts and problems at the grassroots level." A run of uncommonly violent incidents has shaken China this year as the country grapples with a weakening economy, high youth unemployment and a drawn-out property crunch. Mass killings are rare in China given the country’s strict gun laws and deliberate acts such as these touch on what Beijing fears most: social instability that could cast doubt on the Communist Party’s ability to govern. In June, four instructors affiliated with a U.S.
college were injured in a stabbing attack in the northeastern rust-belt city of Jilin. The injured included three Americans and an Iowa resident who isn’t a U.S. citizen.
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