<div><p>A Chinese student stabbed to death a 49-year-old secretary and wounded three other people in an attack Wednesday at a university in southern France, officials said.</p><p>The 26-year-old sociology student killed the woman with a butcher's knife and wounded three other people, one of them seriously, at the university in the southern town of Perpignan.</p><p>Police arrested the student from the northeast Chinese city of Shenyang, who "appeared to be suffering from an attack of dementia" and was undergoing psychological testing, said public prosecutor Jean-Pierre Dreno.</p><p>"He attacked them at 9:30 (0830 GMT) in the university's sociology department with a butcher's knife of 20 to 30 centimetres (up to 12 inches)", Dreno said.</p><p>The secretary was making photocopies at the university library when she was attacked. Her screams for help prompted a sociology professor to rush to her aid.</p><p>The professor suffered serious wounds from knife blows to his face, arms and legs, the prosecutor said.</p><p>A supply teacher who also arrived to help managed to disarm the attacker and a group of students then subdued him. The secretary later died in hospital from knife wounds to her chest and throat, Dreno said.</p><p>The prosecutor said the Chinese student, who had been attending university in Perpignan since 2005, apparently knew the secretary's daughter and also had threatened other students.</p><p>President Nicolas Sarkozy offered condolences to the secretary's family and praised the courage of bystanders who came to her aid and managed to subdue the attacker.</p><p>In a statement issued by his office, he expressed "support for the whole university community and hopes that investigations will shed light on these events as soon as possible."</p><p>Higher Education Minister Valerie Pecresse travelled to Perpignan to show support for university employees following the attack.</p><p>"This is a horrible tragedy. It is a tragedy involving mental health," said Pecresse. "I want to understand why this young man, who had been hospitalised in a psychiatric ward, was at the university."</p><p>The Chinese student had spent a week at the Perpignan hospital in November to undergo treatment and had not shown up for his exams earlier this week.</p><p>The head of the conference of university rectors, Lionel Collet, described the incident as "one of the worst on a campus in recent years".</p><p>The sociology faculty was closed on Wednesday but the rest of the university remained open. Students, professors and staff were in a state of shock.</p><img src="http://admatch-syndication.mochila.com/images/ad.gif?aid=66839635&bid=informcom" /></div><div id="copyright"><div>

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