Six killed, 14 injured in knife attack in China

A deadly knife attack in eastern China has killed at least six people and left 14 wounded, local officials have said, in what was the third such indiscriminate assault on civilians by the disgruntled citizens in recent weeks.

A 25-year-old unemployed man named Wu from Huaining county attacked the civilians on Saturday to vent out his anger as he was going through family problems, local officials in Anqing city in Anhui province said.

"He killed out of anger, because of family troubles and pessimism,” the municipal government said in a statement.

As of Sunday, six victims of the attack were dead and 14 others were being treated for injuries. One of the injured was in a critical condition while the other 13 were in a stable state, Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported.

Videos circulating on the internet show several pedestrians wounded and covered in blood on a walkway along Renmin Road in the city centre, as well as multiple bloodstains on the ground.

The suspect was subdued and taken away from the scene by four police officers.

The incident was the third indiscriminate attack in mainland China in the last two weeks.

On May 22, five people were killed after a car was driven into a crowd in the north-eastern city of Dalian.

Police arrested a man named Liu over the attack, saying he wanted to “take revenge on society” after an investment had failed. A week later, a man was arrested in Nanjing. The driver surnamed Liu has been held.

Later police said Liu committed the crime as an act of revenge on society after an investment failure.

These back-to-back crimes have caused great unease among the Chinese public, with some blaming them on broader socio-economic problems, the report said.

An internet user named “Chanchan” posted on the social media site Weibo that “the disparity between the rich and the poor is too large.

“The lower class can’t earn more than a few meals for the rich in a lifetime of hard labour … in desperation the dark side of human nature will be infinitely magnified, but [the people who] hurt the innocent really should go to hell”, the report quoted him as saying.

Social revenge attacks by disgruntled elements including knife attacks on kindergarten schools in China are a common occurrence.

Such attacks were mostly attributed by police to disgruntled or mentally deranged people who have unaddressed grievances.