China’s top policeman vowed to “severely strike” at anyone caught attacking schools, in an angry diatribe following a kindergarten bloodbath — the fifth such assault in just a few weeks.
In a speech following Wednesday’s attack in northern China that left nine people dead, including seven children, Chinese Public Security Minister Meng Jianzhu (孟建柱) urged police at all levels to ensure schools are protected.
“We must strike at the criminals so that they don’t dare lay their hands on the children,” Meng said in a speech posted on his ministry’s Web site.
“We must thoroughly adhere to our strike hard policy, severely strike at all illegal criminal acts aimed at violating or harming the lives and property of teachers, students and children.”
On Wednesday, a disgruntled landlord armed with a meat cleaver hacked to death seven young children, all under the age of five, and two adults at a kindergarten in Shaanxi Province, state press reports said.
Eleven other children were injured, two seriously.
The incident, which ended with the assailant’s suicide, was the fifth attack on children in less than two months and comes despite a push to boost security in and around schools across the country.
Local villager Wu Huanming (吳煥明), 48, used a kitchen cleaver to carry out the killings in the city of Hanzhong, Xinhua news agency quoted the Shaanxi provincial emergency office as saying.
A preliminary police investigation found that Wu had rented a house to the proprietor of the privately-run kindergarten and was upset that the property was not vacated in April, when the lease expired.
More than 2,000 security guards dressed in riot gear were sent to some Beijing schools on Wednesday, but thousands more were needed to patrol the capital’s schools alone, the Beijing News said, citing police.
Auschwitz survivor Eva Schloss, the stepsister of teenage diarist Anne Frank and a tireless educator about the horrors of the Holocaust, has died. She was 96. The Anne Frank Trust UK, of which Schloss was honorary president, said she died on Saturday in London, where she lived. Britain’s King Charles III said he was “privileged and proud” to have known Schloss, who cofounded the charitable trust to help young people challenge prejudice. “The horrors that she endured as a young woman are impossible to comprehend and yet she devoted the rest of her life to overcoming hatred and prejudice, promoting kindness, courage, understanding
Tens of thousands of Filipino Catholics yesterday twirled white cloths and chanted “Viva, viva,” as a centuries-old statue of Jesus Christ was paraded through the streets of Manila in the nation’s biggest annual religious event. The day-long procession began before dawn, with barefoot volunteers pulling the heavy carriage through narrow streets where the devout waited in hopes of touching the icon, believed to hold miraculous powers. Thousands of police were deployed to manage crowds that officials believe could number in the millions by the time the statue reaches its home in central Manila’s Quiapo church around midnight. More than 800 people had sought
DENIAL: Pyongyang said a South Korean drone filmed unspecified areas in a North Korean border town, but Seoul said it did not operate drones on the dates it cited North Korea’s military accused South Korea of flying drones across the border between the nations this week, yesterday warning that the South would face consequences for its “unpardonable hysteria.” Seoul quickly denied the accusation, but the development is likely to further dim prospects for its efforts to restore ties with Pyongyang. North Korean forces used special electronic warfare assets on Sunday to bring down a South Korean drone flying over North Korea’s border town. The drone was equipped with two cameras that filmed unspecified areas, the General Staff of the North Korean People’s Army said in a statement. South Korea infiltrated another drone
Cambodia’s government on Wednesday said that it had arrested and extradited to China a tycoon who has been accused of running a huge online scam operation. The Cambodian Ministry of the Interior said that Prince Holding Group chairman Chen Zhi (陳志) and two other Chinese citizens were arrested and extradited on Tuesday at the request of Chinese authorities. Chen formerly had dual nationality, but his Cambodian citizenship was revoked last month, the ministry said. US prosecutors in October last year brought conspiracy charges against Chen, alleging that he had been the mastermind behind a multinational cyberfraud network, used his other businesses to launder
RSS