A FORMER high school student found guilty of killing two classmates with rat poison has been executed in eastern China, a court official said yesterday.

　　Li Feng, 20, was convicted on murder charges and sentenced to death for putting the poison in breakfast porridge at his school in the city of Jinan in January last year, said Meng Jianguo, an official at the Jinan Intermediate-Level People’s Court.

　　Li was executed Friday after an appeals court upheld his sentence, he said.

　　The defendant poisoned his classmates to avenge a grudge after he was punished for cheating in a test and becoming angry at a schoolmate who allegedly wrote love letters to his girlfriend, Meng said.

　　Another seven students were hospitalized but survived the poisoning, he said.

　　Li used an illegal but widely available type of rat poison, Meng said.

　　The same poison was also used by a man who police say admitted to killing 38 people earlier this month in the eastern city of Nanjing by spiking food from a snack shop.

　　Police say a businessman jealous of the success of the rival snack shop was behind the Sept. 14 attack, which the Government says led to the hospitalization of some 200 people, many of them school children.

　　The case prompted a crackdown on the unlicensed sale of poisons in Shanghai, which is east of Nanjing, state media said yesterday.

　　(SD-Agencies)