Eight family members in Georgia trailer park killed

UNITED STATES - Eight people are dead in a Georgia trailer park and two more critically injured in what is being called a mass shooting.

In custody is Guy Heinze Jr. who has been charged with possession of marijuana and the drug Darvocet, tampering with evidence and obstruction of an officer. He has NOT been charged with the gruesome murders however although he remains a suspect.

Police received a 911 call shortly after 8:00 am (1200 GMT) Saturday "of multiple deceased persons found in a mobile home in the New Hope mobile park." Officers arriving on the scene found seven dead people and two more who were critically injured in the trailer park in Brunswick, Georgia, about 70 miles (115 kilometers) south of Savannah.

Police are currently withholding motive, who did the shooting and what exactly happened as more details become clear. Today police released the 911 tape:

"My whole family is dead," said Guy Heinze Jr., 22, when he called in the 911 call. Barely coherent, he said he had arrived at the mobile home Saturday morning to find family members dead and bleeding. "My whole family is dead ... it looks like they've been beaten to death, but I don't know, man."

He then says the ambulance "better hurry," because his cousin, Michael Toler, a 19 year-old man with Down syndrome, was alive, but "that his face is smashed in." Michael later died from his wounds.

Later neighbour Orlinski takes the phone and tells the dispatcher: "I know there's a little baby. ... Shoot, there's a little baby. I don't know if the baby was in there or not."

Heinze apparently moved several of the bodies, trying to find someone who was still alive.

One police source says it may have been a mass murder-suicide, but they won't know until all the facts have been confirmed.

An official close to the investigation confirms some of the victims were shot. The quiet community has a low crime rate compared to other parts of Georgia. The killing at the New Hope trailer park, a 250-acre former plantation of pine trees and pecan groves, is the latest in a spate of mass killings in the United States.

In August, a Pennsylvania man embittered by what he described as constant rejection by women, walked into a women's health club and opened fire on a dance class, killing three women before turning the gun on himself in Greenhill, Alabama.

Seattle man kills his 5 children

UNITED STATES - A man and his five children are dead in what police believe was a murder-suicide at a mobile home in Washington state.

Police suspect the father shot and killed his children, ages seven to 16, before taking his own life Saturday.

The bodies of four girls and a boy, who was the youngest of the siblings, were found inside their home at the Deer Run mobile park in Pierce County, 70 kilometres south of Seattle.

The body of the 35-year-old father was found in his still-running car, 30 kilometres from his home.

He had apparently killed himself with a rifle, Auburn Police Sgt. Scott Near said. No note was left in the car.

The mother's aunt, Penny Flansburg, identified the couple as Angela and James Harrison and the children as Maxine, Samantha, Heather, Jamie and James.

The father worked as a diesel mechanic, and the mother works at Wal-Mart, Flansburg said.

A classmate of the eldest daughter said she told him Friday night that her parents had fought and her father had followed her mother, trying to persuade her to return after she left the home.

This latest mass murder is part of a string of mass murders in the USA.

Sat 4 April: Father shoots his five children, then himself, near Seattle.

Sat 4 April: Gunman kills three policemen in Pittsburgh before being wounded and captured.

Fri 3 April: Gunman kills 13 people at an immigration centre in Binghamton, New York state, then shoots himself.

Sun 29 March: Gunman kills seven elderly residents and a nurse at a nursing home in Carthage, North Carolina, then is shot and wounded himself.

Sun 29 March: Man kills five relatives and himself in Santa Clara, California.

Copkiller in Pittsburgh guns down three officers

UNITED STATES - Today three police officers have been killed by a gunman in Pittsburgh - the second mass shooting in the US in the last 24 hours. The three dead officers are Eric Kelly, Stephen Mayhle and Paul Sciullo III. Kelly had been on the force for 14 years and the other two only two years each. Another officer was shot in the hand and a fifth broke his leg on a fence.

The officers were the first Pittsburgh city officers to die in the line of duty in 18 years. (The last Pittsburgh police officers killed in the line of duty were Officers Thomas L. Herron and Joseph J. Grill, who died after their patrol car collided with another vehicle while chasing a stolen car on March 6th, 1991.)

Today's shooting is one of the biggest police death tolls since September 11th 2001 and a similar shooting in Oakland California 2 weeks ago.

The officers were responding to an emergency call from the house of the gunman, 23-year-old Richard Poplawski, who was arrested after a four-hour standoff.

Police said he was waiting, armed with multiple assault rifles (including an AK-47), a bulletproof vest, a .357 Magnum handgun, several other handguns and "enough ammunition to take on a small army". He shot and killed two officers as they entered the house, and a third who tried to help them.

Poplawski then traded gunfire with police for four hours before being injured and giving himself up.

Gail Moschetti, who lives diagonally across the street from the Poplawski house, said she heard hundreds of shots as she and her husband took refuge in their basement. Tom Moffitt, 51, a city firefighter who lives two blocks away, said he came to the scene and heard "hundreds, just hundreds of shots."

Poplawski's friends said he had recently lost his job, and was worried that US President Barack Obama was about to ban assault rifles. (I agree, his logic doesn't make much sense.) Poplawski's best friend Edward Perkovic said Poplawski feared "the Obama gun ban that's on the way" and "didn't like our rights being infringed upon."

Perkovic, 22, said he got a call at work from him in which Poplawski said, "Eddie, I am going to die today. ... Tell your family I love them and I love you."

Perkovic said: "I heard gunshots and he hung up. ... He sounded like he was in pain, like he got shot."

The shooting comes a day after a immigrant gunman killed 13 people in New York state, because he had lost his job and had poor English.

In a televised press conference, Pittsburgh Police Chief Nathan Harper said it was a "very sad day" for the city. "Our hearts and our prayers go out to the officers who paid the ultimate sacrifice," he said.

Chief Harper said the emergency call had been made by the gunman's mother, who had apparently stayed in the basement of the house during the whole incident, and had learned her son intended to going on a shooting rampage.

According to Pittsburgh Police Chief Harper the gunman had been "lying in wait", and the first two officers who reached the house were shot in the head as they entered.

Poplawski has been charged with three counts of homicide, aggravated assault and a weapons violation.

Poplawski had been laid off from his job at a glass factory earlier this year. A highschool dropout, Poplawski had recently stopped attending classes to get his GED certificate and was hoping to join the Marine Corps so he could fight overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Vietnamese man kills 13 at immigrant centre

UNITED STATES - The small upstate New York town of Binghamton became the latest community to suffer the horror of gun rampage in America when a man yesterday killed 13 people at an immigrant counseling centre where many of his victims were studying to become American citizens.

The gunman was 42-year-old Jiverly Voong (aka Jiverly Wong), who had recently been laid off from an assembly plant during the American recession.

The carnage at the American Civic Association, a language and help centre for immigrants from all over the world settled in New York state, had all the hallmarks of being premeditated. The gunman, an immigrant from Vietnam, drove his car to the back of the building and parked it tight against the rear door – preventing those inside from escaping.

He then went around to the front door armed with two handguns and shot both receptionists, one fatally.

Despite a serious wound to the stomach, the wounded receptionist managed to sound the alarm by mobile phone at 10:31 AM, and spent the next 90 minutes hiding under a desk while she fed information to the police. Officers were at the scene within two minutes, and SWAT teams arrived four minutes later, but by then it was too late to prevent the death toll from rising to horrifying levels.

The gunman walked from the reception area to a classroom where immigrants were studying for their citizenship exams. Twelve of the people in that room were to join the list of the gunman's victims, and only four others were alive last night in hospital in critical condition.

It took police three hours to clear the building, a low-rise concrete structure in a quiet side street in the centre of town. Twenty-six people were cowering in the basement, many crammed in a boiler room, and were so traumatized they refused to come out even when police told them it was safe to finally leave.

Zhanar Tokhtabayeva, a 30-year-old from Kazakhstan, said she was in an English class when she heard a shot and her teacher screamed for everyone to go to the storage room.

"I heard the shots, every shot. I heard no screams, just silence, shooting," said Zhanar. "I heard shooting, very long time ... and I was thinking, when will this stop? I was thinking that my life was finished."

Right: A Beretta 92 FS pistol similar to the one used in the shooting.

Jiverly Voong's body was found among the dead, with a satchel full of ammunition around his neck and the two semi-automatic pistols, a .45-caliber Beretta and a 9 millimeter Beretta, beside him. ID on him identified him as Jiverly Voong and the handguns were registered under the name of Jiverly Wong.

Today, Binghamton's mayor said the man was depressed after recently losing his job. "He had lost a job recently and was somewhat angry," says Mayor Matthew Ryan. "He had language issues, didn't speak English that well, and was really concerned about his employment situation."

This morning, the Pakistani Taliban leader Baituallah Mehsud claimed responsibility for the shooting, saying that it was revenge for US drone attacks in Pakistan, but the FBI ruled out his involvement as a complete lie to get attention.

Binghamton, a university town of 45,000, has a long lineage of immigrant populations, attracted to its industries since the 1920s. The Binghamton civic association helps many of those immigrants to learn English upon arrival in America.

"How could he do this to them? The people who work here are our friends," says Peter Lu, standing down the street from the centre. He came to the US from China 20 years ago and his wife learned English there too.

Last night relatives of the dead were being briefed and comforted at a church meeting house a mile away from the scene. The nationality of those assembled suggested that the victims came from all over the world: China, Laos, South Korea and Slovakia.

Marsha Maroney, who works for the church charities group which provided the facilities, said that the atmosphere among the relatives was heavy. "It's worry, and shock, and now fatigue. It's terribly hard to watch."

The shooting is the latest in a seemingly never-ending stream of incidents of mass murder in the US, which many observers ascribe to the country's gun laws which are the most lax in the developed world. The United States is the only country with 'the right to bear arms'.

Last week, a gunman killed eight people in a North Carolina nursing home. Last month, an Alabama man killed 10 people, including several members of his family, before turning the gun on himself. The largest mass shooting in American history occurred in April 2007, when a mentally ill student at Virginia Tech University killed 32 people and wounded many others before killing himself. This month marks the 10th anniversary of the killing of 13 at Columbine high school in Colorado by two disgruntled students.

Many states have few laws on gun ownership beyond barring immigrants, convicted felons and the severely mentally ill from possessing firearms, which means immigrants, criminals and insane people can own guns just as easily as law-abiding sane American citizens.

The news of yet another gun tragedy may bring the issue of controls back into the political debate, though since Virginia Tech it had receded into the background again under the ever-present pressure of the gun lobby.

The Obama administration has indicated that it supports the renewal of an expired federal ban on assault rifles.

In Europe for G-20 meetings, Barack Obama said last night that he was shocked and saddened to hear of the shooting, which he called an "act of senseless violence".

On Friday, the federal government announced that 663,000 Americans lost their jobs in March. What's truly unsettling in America's new era of gloom and dead ends is wondering how many of those 663,000 might be deeply, irrevocably angry about it — and might have a gun. No wonder the crime rate is going up.

"Maybe research can prevent further tragedies of this type," a man named Charles Whitman wrote one day in 1966. Then he ascended a tower at the University of Texas, looked out over the campus, pulled out a shotgun, three rifles and three pistols and killed 16 people.

Shocking? No. Whitman had received a court martial as a United States Marine and lost his job, which combined with poor family life and declining health led him to want to go out with a bang.

During a recession, it really should not be considered a surprise.

Cop Killer in Oakland California kills 4

UNITED STATES - Four police officers were shot dead and a fifth is now brain dead and on life support in the northern California city of Oakland, marking the deadliest day in the department's history.

The shootings started Saturday after a routine traffic stop. Two officers on motorcycle patrol were shot by a man wanted for violating his parole (The gunman was 'on parole for assault with a deadly weapon'). The gunman then fled the scene.

The suspect was later killed by police during an intense manhunt by dozens of Oakland police, California Highway Patrol officers and Alameda County sheriff deputies. Streets were roped off and an entire area of east Oakland was closed to traffic so they could corner the gunman.

At approx. 3:30 pm, officers received an anonymous tip that the gunman was inside a nearby apartment building. A SWAT team entered the building and the gunman opened fire. Two more police SWAT officers were killed and a third officer was grazed by a bullet.

Officers returned fire, killing the suspect.

One witness, said he heard gunshots outside, where he saw two SWAT officers lying on the ground. "I went over to one officer and saw he was bleeding from his helmet pretty bad," he said. "The other officer was laying motionless." He said one officer had gunshot wounds to the jaw and neck.

The man proceeded to administer first aid to the officer until police arrived.

Another wounded officer was treated and released from hospital on Saturday night.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger called the officers' deaths "tragic", and ordered state flags to be flown at half-mast. Schwarzenegger arrived in Oakland on Sunday to meet members of the police department.

"This is a tragic day for law enforcement officers everywhere," he said in a statement, adding the slain police officers had "dedicated their lives to public safety and selflessly worked to protect the people of Oakland".

The dead gunman had recently got out of prison on parole and had a long criminal record, was identified by police as Lovelle Mixon, 26. Mixon was previously convicted of an armed robbery in San Francisco.

Police said Mixon used different weapons in each incident. One gun was used at first and an assault rifle was used at the apartment building where he was hiding when he killed the SWAT officers.

Police don't know why the officers initially stopped the suspect, but said it apparently was a routine traffic stop, possibly for speeding or erratic driving.

Mixon's family have apologized to the families of the killed officers, saying he was not a monster.

"He's not a monster," his sister, Enjoli Mixon says. "I don't want people to think he's a monster. He's just not. He's just not."

"We're crushed that this happened," said his grandmother, Mary Mixon. "Our hearts and prayers go out to the officers' families ... this shouldn't have happened."

Mary Mixon says Mixon had a feud with his parole officer, and said he was even willing to return to prison so he could get a new parole officer.

Authorities said the Oakland officers killed were Mark Dunakin (40), Ervin Romans (43), Dan Saki (35), and John Hege (41).

It was the first time an officer in Oakland was killed in the line of duty in five years.

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In other news...

1 dies as bikers rampage in Sydney Australia airport

Warring bikers brawled through Australia's largest airport Sunday, beating one suspected gang member to death and brandishing metal poles "like swords" as they rampaged through the main domestic terminal in front of terrified travellers.

Police said a group of suspected gang members was ambushed as they disembarked from an airplane.

"A fight ensued, the fight moved through various parts of the terminal," said Police Detective Inspector Peter Williams. 15 men were involved in the violence, which rampaged from the ground floor up one level to the departures hall before most of the men fled.

One man died in hospital from head injuries after the brawl, the latest sign of a biker war in Sydney.

"They came running through picking up the big metal barrier poles and swinging them like swords at each other," says witness Naomi Constantine. "I saw one of the men lying on the ground and another man came up with a pole and just started smashing it into his head," she says.

Four men were arrested but many others escaped, some of them by hailing taxis and escaping in the confusion.

Authorities fear the gang war brewing in Sydney will get worse, especially following a string of drive-by shootings and an explosion last month outside a fortified Hell's Angels clubhouse.

Canadian foils plot to burn down UK school

CANADA/POLITICS - A Montreal university student is being credited with foiling a firebomb attack on a British high school and says he tried to stall the bomber while he tipped off local police in the United Kingdom.

J.P. Neufeld phoned police in Norfolk, England, after he spotted a posting on an online forum Tuesday that threatened to torch Attleborough High School and the nearly 1,000 students inside.

The entry, on the website newgrounds.com, featured a photo of a gasoline jerry can and the message: "Today at 11:30 GMT I will attack my school with arson and other forms of violence. Those bastards will pay."

By calculating the time-zone difference, Neufeld realized the assault was less than an hour away, so he attempted to slow the website member while trying to identify him.

"So you're gonna walk around the school with a gas can?" asked Neufeld, 21, a moderator for the website.

The member flatly replied: "Pretty much."

Meanwhile, with the help of other users surfing the site that morning, the Concordia University student quickly identified the suspect and phoned Norfolk police.

"They took me quite seriously the first time I called them, they didn't even bother to ask 'Who are you? Is this a hoax?'," says the Canadian.

The police force swiftly alerted Attleborough high school, where teachers detained a 16-year-old inside the school office until police officers arrived.

The arrest was made about 40 minutes after Neufeld placed the call. The teenager was caught carrying a knife, matches and a container of flammable liquid inside his bag.

Police confiscated the computer belonging to the teen, who is being held under the Mental Health Act and cannot be identified due to his age.

"Given the fact that he had all that stuff with him it was obviously a very serious incident - or had the potential to be very serious," says investigator John Dack. "I know (the school is) extremely grateful to the young person from Canada who called us."

The police chief in Norfolk, about 170 kilometres northeast of London, plans to send Neufeld a letter thanking his effort.

Neufeld said he had noticed the user on the website many times, mostly because the member's online signature features a still frame from a cafeteria tape of Columbine High School. The image shows the time and date of the 1999 massacre that left 15 people dead - including the two shooters - and 23 wounded. He evidently thought of the Columbine murderers as heroes.

"There's always the risk that it's going to be a waste of time, but I knew I couldn't take the chance since all the school shootings that have happened recently," says Neufeld.

"It's just something you don't fool around with anymore."

Question: Does Attleborough High School have an anti-bullying program that could have prevented this incident entirely?

Eleven die in Alabama shooting spree

POLITICS - Authorities grappled today for the reason a 27-year-old Alabama man shot dead 10 people, including his mother, before killing himself after a gun battle with police and a car chase down a rural highway.

Michael McLendon, who lived with his mother, killed five of his victims in yesterday's shooting spree at a mobile home in Samson, in south-eastern Alabama, according to a local coroner and Wynnton Melton, mayor of nearby Geneva.

The victims at the mobile home included the wife of a local deputy sheriff and her child. He also killed two people at a convenience store and a man in a pickup truck who died during a car chase as Michael McLendon apparently fired at random.

"We sent 11 bodies to Montgomery (the state capital)," said Robert Preachers, the coroner in neighbouring Coffee County who said he knew most of the victims including the killer.

"He (McLendon) was a nice quiet kid, no trouble. He was always polite and nice," Preachers said. Asked about a possible motive, he said: "He carried it with him to the grave."

Rural south-eastern Alabama, which borders Florida, is a largely agricultural area with many low-income families.

Mass shootings have become more frequent in the United States in recent years. Guns are widely available for purchase in the United States, a country that prides itself on the right to own weapons for self defence and hunting.

Michael McLendon was armed with a large collection of both pistols and assault rifles.

The shooting spree began in Kinston, a small town in Coffee County, and continued to Samson, where McLendon killed his grandmother, uncle and others.

It ended after a car chase and gun battle in Geneva, the county seat about 12 miles away, they said.

"Officer Ricky Morgan rammed his car to distract him and was rewarded with a hail of bullets .... One bullet grazed the shoulder of police chief Frankie Lindsey," said one of the investigators.

A police officer in Geneva said the gunman "shot at several vehicles on the highway and then he shot at Wal-Mart and Piggly Wiggly," a grocery store.

Michael McLendon also shot the family's dogs, Preachers said. "He killed her (his mother) and her dogs. He shot the dogs in the head. Then he piled them up and gassed them (poured gasoline on them and lit it). He laid the dogs next to her," he said.

According to police Michael McLendon kept a list of co-workers, teachers and family members who had upset him. The list also included several companies including Kelley Foods, a sausage factory where McLendon worked until last week, and Reliant Metals, a factory where he worked in 2003.

McLendon's murderous spree ended at Reliant Metals where he was cornered by police and shot himself in the head.

German highschool student kills 15

POLITICS - A 17-year-old gunman dressed in black opened fire at his former high school in southwestern Germany today, killing at least 13 people there and another two elsewhere, before police shot him to death, German state officials said.

The teenager killed nine students, three teachers, and a passer-by outside Albertville high school in Winnenden, authorities said.

Triggering a land and air manhunt, he hijacked a car, let the passengers go and drove about 40 kilometers before police found him. When confronted, he killed two bystanders in a shootout with police before he was slain, Baden Wuerttemburg Gov. Guenther Oettinger said. Two officers were seriously injured, but there was no immediate information on other casualties.

Police have identified the gunman as Tim Kretschmer, who graduated last year from the school of about 1,000 students.

It was the country's worst shooting since another teenage gunman killed 16 people and himself in another high school in 2002.

"He went into the school with a weapon and carried out a bloodbath," said police Chief Erwin Hetger. "I've never seen anything like this in my life."

The gunman entered the school in the town 20 kilometers northeast of Stuttgart and opened fire, shooting at random, police said.

Right: The 9-mm Beretta that Tim Kretschmer used in the killings.

Witnesses said students jumped from the windows of the school building. Concerned parents quickly swarmed around the school, which was evacuated.

It was about four hours later that authorities said the gunman had been killed, but it was not immediately clear at what time police shot him.

The German government was "deeply shocked and incensed about the appalling killing spree," Ulrich Wilhelm, a spokesman for Chancellor Angela Merkel, said in Berlin.

In 2002, 19-year-old Robert Steinhaeuser shot and killed 12 teachers, a secretary, two students and a police officer before turning his gun on himself in the Gutenberg high school in Erfurt, in eastern Germany.

Steinhaeuser, who had been expelled for forging a doctor's note, was a gun club member licensed to own weapons. The attack led Germany to raise the age for owning recreational firearms from 18 to 21.

Boy, 11, shoots dad's fiancée with shotgun

UNITED STATES - This morning in the town of Wampum, 45 miles northwest of Pittsburgh, 11-year-old fifth-grader Jordan Brown boarded the bus and headed to school like he did most other mornings in this rural western Pennsylvania community.

But before he left home on Friday, the 11-year-old boy shot his father's pregnant fiancée in the back of the head as she slept in bed. He then put his youth model 20-gauge shotgun back in his room before going out to catch his bus, police say. Houk's fetus died within minutes due to a lack of oxygen

Brown was charged Saturday as an adult in the death of 26-year-old Kenzie Marie Houk, who was eight months pregnant. Houk's family and friends says that there had been past problems with the boy.

"He actually told my son that he wanted to do that to her," said Houk's brother-in-law, Jason Kraner. "There was an issue with jealousy.''

Pennsylvania State Police found Houk's body in the rented farmhouse after her 4-year-old daughter told tree cutters on the property she thought her mother was dead.

The boy told police there was a black truck on the property that morning – possibly the man who feeds the cows – sending investigators to follow a false lead for about five hours. Inconsistencies in Brown's description of the truck led police to re-interview Houk's 7-year-old daughter, who implicated the boy in the killing. State troopers went to get the boy at school.

"She didn't actually eyewitness the shooting. She saw him with what she believed to be a shotgun and heard a loud bang," says police. The gun was found in a "location we believe to be in the defendant's bedroom."

"An 11-year-old kid – what would give him the motive to shoot someone?" said Houk's father, Jack Houk. "Maybe he was just jealous of my daughter and the baby and thought he would be overpowered."

The boy's father, Christopher Brown, is "a mess" and had no indication his son had a problem with Houk. "He's in a state of actual shock and disbelief," says Jack Houk.

The shotgun used is designed for children and has a shorter arm and such weapons do not have to be registered. Jack Houk, 57, said the boy and his father used to practice shooting behind their farmhouse, and the two enjoyed going hunting together.

And these guns are legal...?

Aussie man drops daughter off bridge

HEALTH - A mentally disturbed Australian man pulled over on a highway bridge, took his 4-year-old daughter out of the car and dropped her over the side to her death at 9 AM today in Australia's second-largest city.

Arthur Freeman, 36, of Melbourne was later charged with the murder of 4-year-old Darcey Freeman, but he did not appear in court because police said he was psychologically unfit to do so. He is to be held in custody while an investigation continues. He faces a maximum life sentence if convicted.

The motive is unknown, but the man appeared to be suffering from a mental breakdown due to a divorce/custody battle with his wife over the couple's three children.

The two other children, boys aged 6 and 8, were in Freeman's SUV when he pulled over on the West Gate Bridge in morning peak-hour traffic and dropped the girl 58 metres into the Yarra River.

Stunned witnesses called police, who were able to pull the girl from the river within 10 minutes of receiving the alert. She was barely alive when she was pulled out and later died in Melbourne's Royal Children's Hospital four hours after the fall.

About an hour later, Freeman was arrested with the two surviving children outside the family court.

Ten Reasons why September 11th was Fake

POLITICS - GEORGE W. BUSH
SEPTEMBER 11TH - WAR ON TERRORISM
UNITED STATES - IRAQ - IRAN - AFGHANISTAN

Daycare stabbing in Belgium

2 children, 1 adult dead in daycare stabbing

HEALTH - A man went on a rampage at a Belgium day care centre today, stabbing two young children and a female worker to death and sending 10 other children to hospital, officials said.

Sobbing parents rushed to the scene and to the hospitals, as officials reported some of the wounded children were in serious condition.

Christian Du Four, a local prosecutor, said in the mayhem that ensued the attacker simply walked out and got on his bicycle before being arrested in a nearby supermarket shortly after the 10 a.m. attack.

"We have three people dead and 10 in various hospitals," Du Four told a news conference.

The attack caused widespread panic in the day care centre, which serves 18 children on a residential street in this town 30 kilometres northwest of Brussels.

"People are totally in shock," said Leene Du Bois, a spokeswoman for the regional government of Flanders. "Nobody would have imagined anyone could do so much harm. There is much grief."

She said the perpetrator had no connection to the day care centre.

Media reports said he had a history of mental illness.

Du Four and witnesses said the man rode his bike to the Fabeltjesland day care centre, entered and immediately began slashing a knife around. The dead included two children – ranging in age up to three – and a woman working in the day care centre.

Du Four did not immediately identify the suspect, who was injured as police detained him and taken to a nearby hospital. The VRT television network said the man was a local resident.

Du Four said police showed shaken parents digital photographs of the youngsters who had been taken to the hospital, asking them to identify their children.

The city opened up a nearby community centre to provide psychological counselling to victims and witnesses of the stabbings.

Veerle Heeren, the social welfare minister for the regional Flemish government, said she would be investigating security measures at the centre.

Such an violent attack is rare in Belgium. Although the country has been plagued by notorious child abuse cases, it has escaped the shooting or stabbing attacks at schools witnessed in other European countries.