Knife attack near a school in Beijing injures five people, including three children

Plainclothes police officers pass by a primary school following a knife attack that occurred on an intersection road near a school in the northwestern Haidian district in Beijing

A knife attack near a school in China’s capital yesterday injured five people, including three children, police said.

The attack occurred at midafternoon in Beijing’s northwestern Haidian district. None of the injuries was life threatening, police said in a statement. A 50-year-old suspect surnamed Tang was detained at the scene and is under investigation, it said.

The location of the attack given by the statement is near a famous primary school.

Video circulating on social media showed two school-aged children on the ground. Another image showed a man with blood on his face being held to the ground.

Multiple knife attacks have occurred in China this year, including several involving school children.

Last month, a 10-year-old Japanese student died after being attacked with a knife near his school in the southern city of Shenzhen. Another attack in June at a school bus stop for a Japanese school in Suzhou injured a woman and her child. A Chinese woman who tried to intervene was killed.

In early October, three people were killed and 15 others were wounded in a knife attack in a Shanghai supermarket.

China tightly restricts private gun ownership, “making knives and homemade explosives among the most common weapons,” according to an Associated Press investigation. MDT/AP