GUANGZHOU: A 17-year-old student stabbed six of his classmates on Tuesday evening at their school in Maoming, South China's Guangdong Province, leaving two dead and four injured.

Wu Jianguo, a second grade student at the No 3 Middle School of Dianbai County in Maoming, attacked six students, all from the second grade, with a knife at 8:30 pm. The attacks occurred on a staircase landing. Wu fled the scene.

One student died at the scene, and a second died of blood loss in hospital. The four injured students, one of whom had to have his left kidney removed, are reportedly in stable condition at the county hospital.

Shortly after local police announced a reward of 30,000 yuan ($3,750) for information leading to Wu's arrest, the teenager, accompanied by his parents, turned himself in on Wednesday evening.

Neither the police nor Wu's parents provided a reason for the attack, but a local villager, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Xinhua News Agency that one of the students who was stabbed had asked Wu for a "protection fee" on the same day the incident took place.

But, the villager said, Wu refused to pay, saying he had already paid for the whole year. The source said Wu had turned to his teacher for help, but the teacher did nothing.

"My son seldom went out with his schoolmates, and he had never invited anyone from his school to our home. My son wouldn't kill people for no reason," said the boy's father, Wu Yunfang.

The issue of "protection fees" - in which students are blackmailed into paying money so they are not subjected to physical violence - has been the subject of frequent media reports in recent years.

The latest high-profile case came in March, when a 50-strong gang from Xinyi, Southwest China's Guizhou Province, all of whose members were aged under 17, was found to have extorted some 16,000 yuan ($2,000) in protection fees from more than 100 primary and middle school students over the past two years.

Xinhua

(China Daily 05/18/2007 page4)