‘Help’: Multiple children injured after car crashes into crowd outside school in China

The incident comes amid a spate of violent attacks, including a deadly car ramming, in the country in recent weeks.

Multiple children have been injured after a car ploughed into a crowd outside a primary school in China, as concerns grow over a spate of violent attacks in the country in recent months.

The car, identified as a white SUV, struck people outside Yong’an primary school in the central city of Changde, home to over five million people, in Hunan province on Tuesday, state media reported.

State news agency Xinhua reported “multiple students were injured”, while state broadcaster CCTV said the “specific casualties” were still being investigated.

Police also said a 39-year-old man was being held in custody, adding the injuries sustained by the victims were not life-threatening. Police did not provide further details about the number of casualties or the person responsible.

Many initial videos of the incident already appeared to have been removed from China’s tightly controlled social media platforms, echoing other mass casualty events.

The white SUV crashed into a crowd on Tuesday, leaving multiple students injured. Picture: Social media/AFP

Footage circulating on Chinese social media – which matched online images of the school -appeared to show the aftermath of the incident, with dozens of children running in panic away from the site of the crash yelling “help, help”.

In one clip, several people including a young child can be seen lying on the ground.

Another showed a bloodied man being hit with sticks by passersby shouting “beat him!” as he lay on the ground next to an SUV.

According to the BBC, the driver was caught by parents and school security officers.

“About a dozen people were hit, some of them seriously, but luckily the ambulance came very quickly,” a parent of one of the schoolchildren said.

“Six or seven parents had forced the car of the person who hit others to stop.”

Asked about the incident, the central government in Beijing declined to give further details.

“The Chinese government has always taken and will continue to take effective measures to ensure people’s safety and social stability,” foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian told a regular briefing.

A 39-year-old man was taken into custody following the incident. Picture: Social media/AFP

String of deadly incidents 

China has witnessed a spate of violent incidents in recent months – from mass stabbings to car rammings – a rare development for a country with a proud reputation for public security.

The issue has prompted soul-searching about the state of society, with some despairing about why an increasing number of people seem willing to “take revenge” on random civilians.

Some analysts have linked the attacks to growing anger and desperation at the country’s slowing economy and a sense that society is becoming more stratified.

Beijing’s top public prosecutor vowed “zero tolerance for crimes that infringe students’ rights and interests and endanger campus safety” at a meeting on Tuesday, according to a post on its official WeChat account.

It also pledged to “make every effort to safeguard the safety of campuses and students”.

Tuesday’s crash was the third seemingly random outbreak of carnage in just over a week.

Children were seen running at the scene. Picture: Social media/AFP

Last week a man killed 35 people and wounded more than 40 more when he rammed his car into a crowd in the southern city of Zhuhai – the country’s deadliest attack in a decade.

But authorities took almost 24 hours to release that toll, and videos of the attack later appeared to be scrubbed from social media.

Police said the suspect, surnamed Fan, had been “triggered by … dissatisfaction with the division of property following his divorce”.

35 people were killed when a man drove a car into a car in the southern city of Zhuhai last week. Picture: Hector Retamal/AFP

‘Revenge on society’

On Saturday, eight people were killed and 17 wounded in a knife attack at a vocational school in the eastern Chinese city of Yixing.

Police said the suspect was a 21-year-old former student who was meant to graduate this year but had failed his exams.

Tuesday’s car crash quickly became one of the most discussed social media topics, racking up tens of millions of views on the Weibo platform.

Many users despaired at the occurrence of another grisly incident involving children.

“How can something like this be happening yet again?” asked one user.

“There have been so many people taking their revenge on society recently,” said another.