Sixteen children and two teachers were injured in a knife attack on a kindergarten school in China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region on Wednesday, police said.

The suspect has been arrested and all the injured have been sent to hospital, state-run China Global Television Network, (CGTV) reported. An investigation into the incident is underway, the report said.

Knife attacks mainly targeting kindergarten and middle schools and unarmed civilians in China are a common occurrence.

Such attacks are mostly attributed by the police to disgruntled or mentally deranged people who have unaddressed grievances.

In January, this year police in the Chinese city of Kunming shot and killed a knife-wielding man who axed seven people outside a middle school and later kidnapped a boy and held him a hostage.

The man, surnamed Wang, 56, axed seven people outside the gate of a middle school before kidnapping the boy in Wuhua district in the Kunming city.

One of the injured had died later.