A mentally disturbed man with an axe has attacked children and parents walking on a city street in central China, killing six, officials said.
Three adults and one child died at the scene of the early-morning attack, on the outskirts of Gongyi, and another child and an adult died later from their wounds, a city government spokeswoman said.
Villagers identified the perpetrator as a local farmer with a history of mental illness, the spokesman said, and a suspect had been detained.
Gongyi is in the heavily populated Henan province, in China's grain belt.
A string of attacks at schools, retirement homes and on city streets in China has left dozens of people dead and scores more wounded since the start of 2010.
Last month, a worker slashed children with a knife at a daycare centre for migrant workers in eastern China, wounding eight of them. Reports said the female attacker had suffered a "psychotic episode".
In one of the worst attacks, seven children and two adults were killed at a nursery in the north of the country in May last year.
While seemingly unrelated, the attacks have prompted calls for more attention to serious mental illnesses, and concern over rising stress levels in Chinese society. Assailants in most of the attacks were mentally unstable, bore grudges against their victims or were angry over personal failures.
Schools around China boosted security last year, with more guards at entrances.