A Chinese man shot and wounded 16 young schoolchildren as they were doing their morning exercises, Xinhua news agency said yesterday, the latest in a wave of school attacks to shock the country in recent years. The middle-aged man opened fire with three home-made guns packed with gunpowder and shrapnel at the Niutoushan Primary School in impoverished eastern Anhui province on Wednesday morning, Xinhua said.

The school head and a man who tried to stop the shooting were also injured in the attack. Seven of the 16 wounded children were in serious condition in hospital in the neighbouring province of Zhejiang. “Most of the children sent here had shrapnel injuries to their upper body,” a nurse told Reuters by telephone. “Some were wounded in their head, some in their chests and some in their arms.”

None of the injuries was life-threatening, she said. The guns had been packed with gunpowder used in firecrackers, Xinhua said. More than 200 police were searching for the gunman, whom Xinhua described as a “mental patient” envious of people with children. 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 recent economic boom.

A carpenter broke into a school in southern China in April 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 last year in the Chinese capital Beijing in two separate kindergarten attacks. 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.