Several children injured after car crashes outside primary school in China's Changde

BEIJING: Several students were injured on Tuesday (Nov 19) after a car crashed outside a primary school in central China's Hunan province, state media said.

"Many schoolchildren were injured, the specific casualties are being investigated," state broadcaster CCTV said.

State media did not say if the crash was deliberate.

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.

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

Another showed a bloodied man being beaten with sticks by passersby as he lay on the ground next to an SUV.

An eyewitness told local media that the incident happened at around 7.50am.

About eight to nine people were injured and they included both students and their parents, said the eyewitness, adding that all the victims have been taken to hospital.

The driver was not a parent of a student from the school, local media Sohu reported, citing an official familiar with the matter.

According to the official, a security guard was also hit by the car.

The crash took place outside Yong'an primary school in the central city of Changde, home to over five million people.

It quickly became one of the most discussed social media topics, racking up over 95 million views on the Weibo platform by 11.10am.

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

"How can something like this be happening yet again?" wrote one user.

"There have been so many people taking their revenge on society recently," lamented another.

A third commented: "These kinds of things have a copycat effect. It just takes one big event for others to learn from."

Many initial videos of the incident already appeared to have been removed from China's tightly controlled social media platforms.

SPATE OF DEADLY INCIDENTS

China has seen a string of mass casualty incidents this year, which some analysts have linked to growing anger and desperation at the country's slowing economy and a sense that society is becoming more stratified.

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

Last Monday, 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.

Police said the suspect, surnamed Fan, had been "triggered by (Fan's) dissatisfaction with the division of property following his divorce".

Videos of the attack later appeared to be scrubbed from China's tightly controlled social media platforms.

And on Saturday, eight people were killed and 17 others wounded in a knife attack at a vocational school in eastern China.

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

Beyond the incidents in Yixing and Zhuhai, there has been a spate of other attacks.

In October, in Shanghai, a man killed three people and wounded 15 others in a knife attack at a supermarket.