Seven people died Monday when a driver rammed his car into a Fuzhou city roadside filled with pedestrians.  Three young children were among the fatalities.

Police who rushed to the scene said the ramming incident, which happened shortly after 11am local time, was not an accident.

Fuzhou security authorities said the man, who was driving a Lexus, appeared to have intentionally plowed through the group of pedestrians that were milling by the roadside in Qingshi town.

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They identified the suspect as Lin Jianxin, who admitted that he had just come from a court hearing and was upset over the fact that his wife was divorcing him.

The seven victims were confirmed dead on the spot. Twelve other pedestrians were injured in the ramming incident.

Most of the fatalities were students at a nearby primary school who were being fetched by family members for lunch break, the Fuzhou security bureau said.

One netizen posted that a family had lost three of its members in the incident and that only one survived.

Those wounded were taken to a hospital in Fuzhou and have all been declared in stable condition as of Monday night.

Court staff who were interviewed about Lin Jianxin said they did not notice any untoward behaviour in the suspect and that he appeared calm and stable throughout the hearing on his divorce case.

But state television CCTV and the South China Morning Post reported that the suspect had earlier strapped a petrol can to his body and threatened to blow it up to cause greater damage.

Police did not confirm the media reports but managed to subdue the suspect a few minutes after the roadside ramming incident.