A Hunan primary school teacher stabbed four children to death and wounded 12 other students and four colleagues in an attack that took place on September 30, according to a Friday report on Rednet.com, a Hunan Province website.

Sketchy information concerning the 28-year-old teacher's attack on the group of first-graders first became available on Thursday.

The teacher, who had recently begun working at Guangyi Township Central Primary School, held 65 other students hostage in a Grade 6 classroom after the stabbings. The standoff ended after 70 minutes when police and local government officials convinced him to hand over his weapon and surrender, according to the Rednet.com report.

The bloodshed occurred the day before the week-long National Day holiday.

"Many classmates were too scared to cry," one child was quoted in the Beijing News as saying.

Rednet.com reports that the teacher had been treated as a psychiatric inpatient for schizophrenia some time ago, but had been discharged and had no apparent symptoms of the disease.

He did not disclose his history of mental illness when he took a public teaching certification examination in September 2000. It is not clear whether he had worked as a teacher prior to his employment at Guangyi Primary, or if the school had knowledge of his previous hospitalization.

(China.org.cn October 8, 2004)