In a knife attack on a kindergarten on Wednesday in the Jiangxi Province in southeast China, three people were killed and six others were injured, according to police.

According to a police statement posted on China's version of Twitter, Weibo, a "gangster wearing a cap and mask" broke into the private kindergarten in Anfu county at around 10am local time (0200 GMT), they claimed.

They said that the suspect, 48, is still at large.

The police statement stated that "public security organs are making every attempt to track down the suspect."

An officer of the law can be seen escorting a small child to an ambulance in a video of the incident that the government-run Beijing Daily posted online.

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The victims' ages have not been disclosed.

China generally forbids its inhabitants from carrying firearms, so mass violent crime is uncommon there. However, there have been a number of large-scale stabbings in recent years.

And around the country, tragic assaults targeted primarily at kindergarten and school youngsters have been committed, allegedly by individuals seeking retribution against society or due to qualms with coworkers.

Attacks have compelled authorities to increase security.

Man brandishing a knife
A knife-wielding guy entered a kindergarten in southern China last April, killing two children and injuring 16 others.

In 2020, a knife-wielding attacker struck a primary school in southern China, inflicting injuries on 37 children and two adults. A security guard was named as the offender by the regional media.

And in that year, a man was given the death penalty for poisoning scores of kids as retaliation against a coworker, which resulted in the death of one youngster.

Recent assaults
According to a court in the Henan region of central China, the accused, Wang Yun, poisoned 25 of her colleague's students' porridge by adding sodium nitrite.

In one of the more recent attacks, a knife-wielding attacker stabbed four people at a prominent Shanghai hospital last month before being shot by police and taken into custody.

In June of last year, a man attacked bystanders on a pedestrian shopping area in the eastern Chinese city of Anqing, resulting in six additional fatalities and 14 injuries.