Eight people have been killed and 17 others wounded in a knife attack at a vocational school in Wuxi city, eastern China, police said.

The suspect – a former student – has been arrested, police said on Saturday.

The attack occurred at the Wuxi Vocational Institute of Arts and Technology in Yixing County at about 6:30pm local time (10:30 GMT), the Yixing police said in a statement.

Police said the suspect was a 21-year-old former student at the school, who was meant to graduate this year, but had failed his exams.

“He returned to the school to express his anger and commit these murders,” police said, adding that the suspect had confessed.

This is the second deadly attack within a week after a man drove his car into people at a sport facility in the southern city of Zhuhai, leaving 35 people dead and injuring 43 others.

And there has been a spate of other attacks in recent months.

In October, in Shanghai, a man killed three people and wounded 15 others in a knife attack at a supermarket.

And the month before, a Japanese schoolboy was fatally stabbed in the southern city of Shenzhen, which borders Hong Kong.