One dead in latest stabbing at a Chinese school

BEIJING - One person has died and six were injured in a knife attack at a college in China on Thursday blamed on a student suffering from depression, state news agency Xinhua said, in the latest violence at a Chinese school.

The student, whose family name was given as Wang, burst into a classroom in the southwestern city of Kunming carrying a knife and stabbed the seven students, one of whom died, Xinhua said on its official microblog.

The case was being investigated, the news agency said in a brief report, adding that Wang was suffering from depression.

There have been a series of knife attacks over the past year in China which have unnerved the country following a stabbing attack last March at Kunming train station when 31 were killed, including four of the attackers who police shot dead.

The government blamed that attack on Islamist militants from the far western region of Xinjiang.

Violent crime is rare in China compared with many other countries, but there have been a series of knife and axe attacks in recent years, many on school children.