[ad_1]
Breaking News Emails
Receive last minute alerts and special reports. News and stories that matter, delivered the mornings of the week.
/ Update
By Associated press
BEIJING – A car struck a crowd of children and wounded 18 others in a crowd of children in front of a primary school in northeastern China on Thursday, a local government spokesman said. .
The driver was arrested after the accident occurred around noon in the coastal town of Huludao, said spokesman Jianchang County in the suburbs of the city, who refused to give his name, as do the Chinese bureaucrats.
He described the accident as "a major road accident" and said the case was under investigation.
The CCTV public television channel reported that the five dead and all but two of the injured were children.
A security camera showed a line of kids crossing the street in front of their school when a car approached, changing lanes and drifting into the crowd of kids.
It was not clear if the accident was a deliberate attack or if the driver was doing a bypass to avoid obstacles in front of him.
Wang Mingkuan, a chef at a nearby noodle restaurant, said he was preparing meals when the accident occurred.
"I ran out and saw about a dozen children lying on the ground, some of whom were bleeding, all aged about 7 or 8. Two or three had no sign of life. ", said Wang to the Associated Press by phone.
China has recently experienced a number of similar deliberate incidents.
Last month, a man armed with a knife drove a vehicle into a crowd of pedestrians in Ningbo, in the east of the country, causing two deaths and 16 injuries.
And in September, 11 people were killed and 44 hospitalized after a man deliberately drove a SUV on a square in central Hunan Province, before jumping and attacking the victims with a dagger and a shovel.
The most common motivations are mental illness, the alienation of society or the desire to settle accounts.
Other deadly attacks took place in schools, including several in 2010, during which nearly 20 children were killed, prompting senior government officials to respond and led many schools to strengthen the situation. security.
However, in June, a man used a kitchen knife to attack three boys and a mother near a school in Shanghai, killing two of the children.
Last year, police announced that a man had unleashed an explosion at the entrance of a kindergarten in east China. Family members who gathered to pick up their children at the end of the day then killed eight people.
