A blast near Chuangxin kindergarten rocked Fengxian County in Xuzhou
province on June 15, 2017, as parents were waiting for their children
to finish school. Eight individuals were killed and 66 injured in the
blast.
Two people were killed on the spot, and six others died after being
taken to the hospital, the state-run Xinhua news organisation
reported.
No kindergarten student or teachers are among the dead, the Fengxian
government said on Weibo, a Chinese online networking stage like
Twitter. Classes were in progress when the blast occurred, the
administration said.
A witness told Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post that the blast
came just minutes before the end-of-day bell rang.
While talking to local online portal Sohu, A local shop owner said,
“At about 5 pm, we heard a blast and thought it might have been a gas
explosion at a nearby food vendor."
Another shop proprietor close to the kindergarten, who refused to be
named, told the Post that the blast happened a couple of minutes
before the kindergarten opened its gates for the parents to go inside
the school. "The guardians were all queuing up at the school entryway
at the time," the shop proprietor said.
Realistic pictures that demonstrate the horrifying result of the blast
have been doing rounds on Twitter and Chinese social media sites.
A blast of this size is uncommon in China.
China in the past witnessed violent physical assaults on kindergarten
children by sadistic individuals.
It is the most recent catastrophe to strike a kindergarten in China
over the last few weeks. A school transport bus packed with
kindergarten students caught fire inside a tunnel in eastern Shandong
region on May 9, killing 11 kids, an instructor and the driver.
Authorities later said the fire was purposefully set by the driver,
who was irate at losing additional time wages.
In January, a man outfitted with a kitchen knife stabbed 11 children
at a kindergarten in southern Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region.