The bloodied clothes of one of the students killed in a knife attack at the Ruzhou No. 2 High School.

Yan Yanming was arrested in Ruzhou, central Henan province, Nov. 26 when his mother turned him in to police after he attempted suicide at home, media said.

Twelve students were stabbed, eight died and four were wounded, two of them critically, it said.

No motive was given for the murders, but the Beijing Youth Daily said Yan was hostile toward his victims, who were students at an expensive boarding school in the city.

It was the sixth attack on schoolchildren in just four months.

On Nov. 24, a bus driver was executed for stabbing 24 children with a kitchen knife and kidnapping a 9-year-old girl at a primary school in eastern Shandong province in September.

The same month, a man armed with a knife and homemade bombs attacked 28 children in a kindergarten in the city of Suzhou, near Shanghai. None was killed. In August, a janitor stabbed 17 at a Beijing kindergarten, killing one child.

The Japan Times Weekly: Dec. 4, 2004
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