Man sets fire to China classroom, 3 children dead

BEIJING, May 8 (Reuters) A 19-year-old Chinese man set fire to a kindergarten classroom today, killing at least three children, Xinhua news agency said, the latest in a series of school attacks around the country.

Thirteen children and a teacher were injured when the man broke into the classroom in Shiguan village in the central province of Henan and ignited a can of petrol.

There were 21 children in the classroom at the time.

Xinhua said the man was a native of the village, but it did not give a motive. Police were trying to track him down.

There have been a series of attacks on schools and schoolchildren around China, some by people who have lost their jobs or felt left out of the country's economic boom.

Last October, a man shot and wounded 16 children exercising in a schoolyard in impoverished Anhui province to the south.

A carpenter broke into a school in southern China in April last year and cut off part of a boy's ear with a kitchen knife and half a girl's middle finger.

Two children and a teacher were killed in 2004 in two separate kindergarten attacks in Beijing.

A Chinese bus driver stabbed and wounded 25 primary school children in the eastern province of Shandong in September 2004.

The same month, a man wielding a knife and homemade bombs injured 28 children in the eastern city of Suzhou.

REUTERS DKS KP1731