Taipei, Taiwan — Numerous children were injured by a vehicle at the gate of an elementary school in central China's Hunan province on Tuesday morning, reports said.
Students were arriving for classes around 8 a.m. at Yong'an Elementary School in the city of Changde when the incident occurred.
Few details were immediately available, and it wasn't clear whether the vehicle had lost control or whether it was a deliberate attack.
The official Xinhua News Agency said several adults were also injured and identified the vehicle as a small white SUV. It said the driver was subdued by parents and security guards, and some of the injured were sent to the hospital immediately, with the total casualty count still unknown.
Footage posted on Chinese social media showed the injured lying on the road while terrified students ran past the gate and inside the schoolhouse.
Comments on Chinese internet sites reflected anger and frustration with recurring incidents of violence against citizens by those venting anger at society.
"No matter what the reason is, innocent children should not be harmed," said one comment on the popular Weibo social media site. "Timely resolve conflicts, prevent such incidents and severely punish the perpetrators," said another.
While China has much lower rates of violence than many countries — personal gun ownership there is illegal — knifings and the use of homemade explosives still occur.
Chinese schools have been subject to numerous attacks by people armed with knives or using vehicles as weapons.
A stabbing attack at a vocational school in the eastern Chinese city of Wuxi on Saturday left eight people dead and 17 others injured.
That came shortly after a man drove his car into people at a sports facility in the southern city of Zhuhai, leaving 35 people dead and 43 others injured.
In September, three people were killed in a knife attack in a Shanghai supermarket, and 15 others were injured. Police said at the time that the suspect had personal financial disputes and came to Shanghai to "vent his anger."
The same month, a Japanese schoolboy died after being stabbed on his way to school in the southern city of Shenzhen.
The Chinese government generally censors internet content it deems overly sensitive or political, and some images of the school incident were quickly taken down. Most Western social media sites and search engines like Google are blocked in China, limiting available content even while some people use tools like VPNs and send news through Chinese social media before the censors have time to catch it.