A 40-year-old woman believed to be mentally disabled hacked two preschoolers to death and injured another four people in a village in south China's Guangdong Province Tuesday, police said.

Xu Ximei, a resident of the Mazhan Village in the Dengfang Township of Nanxiong City, committed the killings with a kitchen knife between 1:45 p.m. and 1:55 p.m. at the village's stackyard, at the gate of the village primary school and inside the school, respectively, a police spokesman said, citing witnesses.

Xu was found lying on the ground in a classroom when police arrived at the school at about 2:08 p.m., the spokesman said. She is under detention.

Two preschool boys, four-year-old Chen Chuantang and six-year-old Zhong Gaodong, died after emergency operations failed in hospital, the spokesman said.

Four other people are still being treated at a hospital in Nanxiong City, including a 10-year-old girl Yang Xiaoyan, a six-year-old girl Zou Chunlan, a six-year-old boy Chen Lufeng and Zhong Gaodong's grandmother, 76-year-old Chen Shangqiong.

Family members and villagers told police that Xu Ximei had behaved abnormally recently.

(Xinhua News Agency March 4, 2009)