A man stabbed eight children to death and injured five others at a primary school in east China's Fujian Province Tuesday, local authorities said.

The suspect was identified as Zheng Minsheng, a former community doctor in Nanping City, said spokesman Huang Zhongping with the city's public security bureau.

Zheng, born in April 1968, was a native of Nanping and worked at the Mazhan community clinic before he resigned in June 2009, the spokesman said.

The knife hacking happened at 7:20 a.m. at the entrance of Nanping Experimental Primary School, when crowds of students were arriving. The death toll rose from the original six students to eight by press time.

The school was closed after the attack and all students were taken home by their families.

The school with more than 2,000 students is one of the best in Nanping, a city with about 3 million people.

The five injured children are in hospital, according to the publicity department of Nanping Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China.