A 10-year-old Japanese boy dies after being stabbed in China

A child who went to a Japanese school in the Chinese city of Shenzhen was stabbed and died on Wednesday, officials reported on Thursday. This is the second attack in China in the past few months that happened near a Japanese school.

The 10-year-old boy was stabbed on his way to school on Wednesday at about 8 a.m. (0000 GMT) by a 44-year-old man with the last name Zhong. He was a Japanese citizen born to a Japanese father and a Chinese mother.

Yoko Kamikawa, the foreign minister of Japan, told press in Tokyo that he died early Thursday morning.

Lin Jian, a spokesman for China’s foreign ministry, told a regular news conference in Beijing, “Medical experts did everything they could to save his life, and the Chinese side will help his family take care of his business.”

“According to the information currently available, this is an individual case, and such incidents could occur in any country,” he said.

In the wealthy Shekou area of Shenzhen, where most of the city’s foreigners live and where the school is located, flowers were placed at the gates of the school on Thursday afternoon.

One man who said he was a regular person from Shenzhen said, “As Chinese people, we oppose this behavior and we oppose teachings of hatred.”

“Many of us have been under such teachings of hate for a long time, leading to such evil consequences,” he said.

The attack happened on the anniversary of an event in 1931 that led to war between China and Japan. It was a touchy day at a time when ties between the two countries are likely to get worse.

A Japanese father of two children in Shenzhen, who asked to only be known by his last name, Suzuki, for safety reasons, said, “I actually didn’t know that September 18th was this day for Chinese people to get back at people who hurt them in the Second World War.”

“I have lived here for seven years and did not know we need to be cautious for being Japanese while living in China.”

Kamikawa told reporters earlier in the day that Japan has asked China to give a full account of what happened and to take strong safety steps.

“I take the incident extremely seriously,” she said.

“This should never happen anywhere.” In particular, I feel terrible that this horrible crime was done to a child on their way to school.

In a statement, the Japanese chamber of business in the area said it had asked the Japanese government to make sure the safety of Japanese people in the area.

It was the second attack like this in China in the past few months near a Japanese school. In June, a man attacked a bus that a Japanese school used in the eastern city of Suzhou. The attack killed a Chinese citizen who was trying to protect a Japanese mother and her child from the attacker.