Suspect of stabbing American teachers in detention (China)

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Police believe the attack on four teachers at Cornell College in Iowa was an isolated incident, based on a preliminary assessment, a government spokesperson said.

Chinese police have arrested a suspect in a stabbing attack on four Cornell College of Iowa instructors who taught at a Chinese university in the northeastern city of Jilin, officials said yesterday .

A 55-year-old man surnamed Cui was walking in a public park on Monday when he collided with a stranger, Jilin police said. He stabbed the foreigner and three other foreigners who accompanied him, as well as a Chinese man who had approached to try to intervene, they said.

The Cornell College instructors taught at Beihua University, the American school said.

The injured were rushed to hospital and none of them were in critical condition, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian (林劍) said during a daily press briefing.

He added that police believed the attack in Jilin city's Beishan Park was an isolated incident, based on a preliminary assessment, and that the investigation was ongoing.

Cornell College President Jonathan Brand said in a statement that the instructors were attacked while they were in the park with a faculty member from Beihua, which is in an outlying part of Jilin. Monday was a public holiday in China.

The US State Department said in a statement that it was aware of reports of a stabbing and was monitoring the situation.

The attack came as Beijing and Washington seek to expand people-to-people exchanges to strengthen relations amid trade tensions and international issues such as Taiwan, the South China Sea and the war in Ukraine.

An Iowa state lawmaker said on Instagram that his brother, David Zabner, was injured in a stabbing in Jilin.

U.S. Rep. Adam Zabner described his brother as a doctoral student at Tufts University who was in China as part of the Cornell-Beihua relationship.

“I spoke to David a few minutes ago, he is recovering from his injuries and is doing well,” Adam Zabner wrote, adding that his brother was grateful for the care he received at the hospital.

News of the incident was suppressed in China, where the government maintains control of information on anything considered sensitive. The media didn't talk about it.

Some social media accounts posted reports about the attack in foreign media, but a hashtag about it was blocked on a popular portal, and photos and videos of the incident were quickly deleted.

Cornell spokeswoman Jen Visser said in an email that the college was still gathering information about what happened.