Emergency officials and civilians gather outside the Cantinho do Bom Pastor daycare center in Blumenau, Santa Catarina state, southern Brazil, April 5, 2023, after a man wielding a hatchet attacked the facility, killing four children. REUTERS

A man armed with a hatchet jumped over a wall and invaded a daycare center Wednesday in southern Brazil, killing four children and wounding at least five others, authorities said. The assailant turned himself in at a police station and did not appear to have any connection with the center, which offers nursery services, preschool education and after-school activities.

The dead were between the ages of 5 and 7, authorities said.

Santa Catarina state's Gov. Jorginho Mello confirmed the killings and the arrest of the suspect in the attack, which occurred in the city of Blumenau, on his Twitter account.

Investigators were searching for a motive, a police detective told television reporters in Blumenau, near southern Brazil's Atlantic coast. Images broadcast on TV networks showed weeping parents outside the private daycare center, called Cantinho do Bom Pastor.

Amid rumors on social media of other potential attacks, Blumenau's mayor, Mário Hildebrandt, said the city suspended classes and would declare a 30-day mourning period.

The mayor said five wounded children were taken to hospitals, one of them in a serious condition.

School attacks in Brazil have happened with greater frequency in recent years. Last week, a student in Sao Paulo fatally stabbed a teacher and wounded several others in Sao Paulo.

In 2021, an 18-year-old man entered a daycare center in the city of Saudades, also in Santa Catarina state, with a knife or dagger and fatally stabbed three toddlers and a teacher.

From 2000 to 2022, 16 attacks or violent episodes happened in schools, four of them in the second half of last year, according to a report from researchers led by Daniel Cara, an education professor at the University of Sao Paulo. The researchers prepared the report for the government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

"There is no greater pain than that of a family who loses its children or grandchildren, even more so in an act of violence against innocent and defenseless kids," Lula wrote Wednesday on Twitter. "My thoughts and prayers are the families of victims and the community of Blumenau in the face of the monstrosity of what occurred."

Blumenau, a city of 366,000 people, is famous for its annual Oktoberfest festival.

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