BEIJING — At least five men armed with knives burst into the dormitory of a vocational college and slashed nine students today, one of them seriously, in the latest knife attack at a school in China, state media reported.

China News Service said the pre-dawn attack took place in Haikou, the capital of the southern island province of Hainan, when five or six men burst into a dormitory at the Hainan Institute of Science and Technology and slashed the students. It said eight were wounded slightly, while one's hand was cut off.

Two students remained in hospital with non-life threatening wounds, the reports said.

China News Service said the attack may have been related to an incident late Tuesday when some of the college's students had a confrontation with men at a food stall outside of the school. Such schools usually attract students in their late teens and early twenties.

A spokesman for the Hainan provincial government confirmed the report but said he had no additional information. The official Xinhua News Agency put the number of attackers at more than 10 and said they first assaulted a guard and disabled security cameras before rushing into two dormitories where lights remained on and hacking away apparently at random. It said 13 students were injured in all.