Henan slasher suspect Min Yongjun influenced by doomsday rumours

The man who slashed 23 children with a knife at a rural primary school in Henan on Friday was under the influence of "doomsday" rumours, police said.

Prosecutors in Guangshan county said the suspect was arrested on Sunday on a charge of jeopardising public security and they were checking his mental health after reports he had suffered from epilepsy for 20 years.

The county government said the suspect was 36-year-old Min Yongjun, not Min Yingjun as it had announced earlier.

A propaganda official from the county's Communist Party committee said yesterday Min had told police that his actions had been sparked by widely circulated rumours that the world would end on Friday.

A five-year-old boy was in critical condition and will undergo surgery at the Tongji Hospital in Wuhan , Hubei , the reported. The hospital said the boy was unconscious when he was admitted last week after suffering bleeding in his brain and a fractured skull. The hospital also admitted seven other pupils with serious wounds to their faces and heads. They were in a stable condition.

It said 23 pupils were slashed, one more than it had reported last week. One injured student was so frightened that he ran home immediately after the attack. His parents later took him to hospital for treatment.

A pupil being treated in hospital told that when he and his classmates were at their morning book-reading session, they saw Min smash the windows of their classroom with a kitchen knife. Students screamed for help and fled to a corner at the back of the room but were chased by the man.