Mentally ill employee kills 7 in attack at hospital

A man with a history of mental illness stabbed and killed seven people, of whom six were nurses, at the dormitory of a military-run hospital in North China on Thursday.

An administrator was among those killed and another nurse was seriously injured in the attack in the early hours of the morning, the Xinhua News Agency said.

The Beijing News identified the suspect as Li Xiaolong, 27, saying he had confessed to having a history of mental illness and had received treatment in Beijing and the nearby city of Tangshan in 2006.

Li also worked at the hospital and has been detained.

"The initial understanding is that the suspect did not have any obvious problems with the deceased," Nandu Daily reported.

The report said that Li worked as an assistant chef in the hospital cafeteria. After the killing spree, Li went back to his dorm room.

The No. 281 Hospital is in Beidaihe, a renowned seaside resort close to Beijing. It was a tradition for senior members of the Communist Party of China to travel to the place for summer vacations. The hospital is under the administration of the Beijing Military Command.

While China has ramped up health spending, hospitals are frequently overwhelmed with patients. Doctors are also poorly paid, leading to corruption and a suspicion that staff are more interested in making money by prescribing unnecessary drugs and treatment than tending the sick.

Previous data shows that violent attacks directed at doctors and other healthcare workers in the form of beatings, threats, kidnappings, verbal abuse and murder reached 17,243 cases in 2010. On March 23, 2012, an 18-year-old man, Li Mengnan, attacked four medical workers with a knife in the First Affiliated Hospital of Harbin Medical University. One of the medical workers was stabbed to death. Li was sentenced to lifetime imprisonment for intentional homicide.

A spate of attacks on doctors and nurses in the past two years has prompted the health ministry to provide better security at hospitals.