A knife-wielding man went on a rampage and slashed 10 children on Wednesday in a day care centre operated by a Christian church in the South Korean capital, witnesses and police said.
The 53-year-old man, who is suspected of being mentally unstable, broke into the canteen of the day care centre where the children were having lunch in the church premises.
Ten children were hospitalised, with three of them listed in serious condition after their face and neck were slashed, hospital authorities said.
”The three of them had to undergo operations and were put in the intensive care unit. They are in serious condition,” said an official at Minjung Hospital.
Police said at least one was feared to have received fatal cuts in the attack at the Neung Dong Church, a Christian church, in Gwangjin, a district in northwestern Seoul.
Witnesses said the man entered the canteen, ignoring a challenge by a church attendant.
When the attendant who was looking after the children left to alert others, the man grabbed two kitchen knives and started running amok, slashing and stabbing the children, they said.
He chased the screaming children and hacked anyone within reach. The canteen turned into a bloodbath, with the bleeding children scrambling for shelter below tables.
The man, identified only by his family name, Hwang, told police he had heard voices urging him to attack the youngsters.
”Last night I heard someone whispering in my ear ‘I will kill you. If you kill many others you will be saved’,” the jobless man was quoted as saying by Yonhap news agency.
Television showed the man, with his dirty shirt spattered with blood and hands bound behind his back, being questioned by officers at a police station.
Witnesses and church officials said the man broke into the church canteen through a back door and started patting a child on the head before brandishing knives with both hands.
”He suddenly went on a rampage in the middle of the underground dining hall, stabbing everyone in his way,” a church official told AFP.
The hall was littered with blood, broken chairs and scattered lunch boxes.
Police had to use tear gas to subdue the attacker following a brief confrontation, witnesses said.
District police Lieutenant Kim Sa-Yeon said the attacker was armed with two knives and was shouting threats as he slashed at the youngsters, aged between six and seven.
”We think we may be dealing with a mentally unstable suspect,” said Kim.
The gruesome attack prompted shock and outrage in a country where tolerance of violent crime is low.
Even if the attacker is found to be mentally ill, he will find little sympathy here, where social funding for mental health care is low and patients are usually left in the care of their own families.
”I just cannot understand how this kind of a mad man could freely roam around in the street,” said Kim Jung-Hee, the mother of a seven-year-old victim.
”They must be locked up and separated from ordinary people. You must not rely on medications only,” she said. – Sapa-AFP