Student injured in knife attack near Japanese school in south China
BEIJING (Reuters) -An assailant stabbed and wounded a student at a Japanese school in Shenzhen, southern China, on Wednesday, a Chinese official said, the second such attack near to Japanese educational facilities in the country in recent months.
The attack took place on a sensitive date, the anniversary of an incident in 1931 that triggered war between China and Japan.
"A 10-year-old student of a Japanese school in Shenzhen was stabbed by a man about 200 metres from the school gate," Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said.
The pupil was immediately taken to hospital and the assailant arrested on the spot, he said.
Police in Shenzhen said a juvenile was stabbed about 8 a.m. The suspected assailant was surnamed Zhong and aged 44, it said in a report, but it did not give a motive.
Neither the foreign ministry spokesperson nor the police report stated the victim's nationality but Japanese media said the student was a Japanese boy.
The website of the Shenzhen Japanese School, located in the same district as the police office that issued the report, says it is for children of Japanese nationality.
"The case is still under investigation. China will continue to take effective measures to protect the safety of all foreigners in the country," Lin said.
This incident follows a similar one in June, when a man attacked a bus used by a Japanese school in the eastern city of Suzhou, resulting in the death of a Chinese national who tried to shield a Japanese mother and her child from the assailant.
Japan's Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroshi Moriya said on Wednesday Tokyo had requested China to prevent such an attack happening again. Japan also sent officials to the area to provide support.
"Japan will continue to work closely with the Chinese authorities and make every effort to ensure the safety of its overseas nationals," he told a press conference.
Later, Japanese Vice Foreign Minister Masataka Okano summoned the Chinese ambassador to Japan and conveyed grave concern over the incident.
Wednesday marks the 93rd anniversary of the Mukden Incident, a "false flag" event staged by the Japanese military that triggered its invasion of its neighbour. Some 14 million Chinese people died and 100 million more were made refugees in the war that followed, historians estimate.
(Reporting by Liz Lee and Joe Cash in Beijing, Kaori Kaneko, Kiyoshi Takenaka in Tokyo; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman and Angus MacSwan)
