Chinese police are launching a campaign to prevent crime in the nation's schools, which has claimed 43 lives over the last 18 months.

The ministry said it had received 200 reports of serious campus crime including 103 involving homicide, kidnapping and rape by Friday. The crimes resulted in 43 deaths.

"All school robbery cases, no matter how little money is involved, should be investigated as quickly as possible," said a brief report from the Ministry of Public Security, quoting Vice Minister Liu Jinguo during a televised police workshop.

Liu ordered local police to increase manpower to investigate campus crime, hoping to solve "a handful" of prominent cases that resulted in deaths by the end of the year.

"Police should especially bust gangs and hooligans that hang around the campus," Liu said. "We should not go soft on these gangs."

He also asked local police to shut down unlicensed Internet cafes around campus and ensure that people under 18 are kept away from these venues.

The ministry has stationed over 102,000 police on and around campuses across the country. But Liu said more police presence was needed, especially in the countryside.

According to police, more than 50 percent of the reported student deaths were caused by student conflicts and many were the result of knife fights.

The release of statistics came one day before local media reported a grief-stricken father in Beijing asked for justice for his daughter, a college student, who was strangled. Police say her ex-boyfriend, also a university student, had confessed to killing the 22-year-old woman after they quarreled in an evening in April, the Beijing Youth Daily reported on Saturday, adding that the trial would open this week.

"If the school guards had discovered the fight in time, my daughter might still be alive," said the father Wu Tongdi.