Attack on train station leaves at least 33 dead, 130 injured

Associated Press

BEIJING

More than 10 knife-wielding attackers slashed people at a train station in a southwestern city in what authorities called a terrorist attack by ethnic separatists in western China, and police fatally shot four of the assailants, leaving 33 people dead and 130 others wounded, state media said.

The attackers, most of them dressed in black, stormed the Kunming train station in Yunnan province and started attacking people Saturday evening, according to witnesses.

Student Qiao Yunao was waiting to catch a train at the station when people starting crying and running, and then saw a man slash another man’s neck, drawing blood.

“I was freaking out, and ran to a fast food store, and many people were running in there to take refuge,” she told The Associated Press via Sina Weibo, a Chinese microblog. “I saw two attackers, both men, one with a watermelon knife and the other with a fruit knife. They were running and chopping whoever they could.”

One suspect was arrested, the official Xinhua News Agency said. Evidence found at the scene of the attack showed that it was “a terrorist attack carried out by Xinjiang separatist forces,” the agency quoted the municipal government as saying. Authorities considered it to be “an organized, premeditated violent terrorist attack.”

The far western region of Xinjiang is home to a simmering rebellion against Chinese rule by separatists among parts of the Muslim Uighur population.

In an indication of how seriously authorities viewed the attack — one of China’s deadliest in recent years — the country’s top police official, Politburo member Meng Jianzhu, arrived in Kunming this morning and went straight to the hospital to visit the wounded and their families, Xinhua reported.

The violence in Kunming came at a sensitive time as political leaders in Beijing prepared for Wednesday’s opening of the annual meeting of the nominal legislature where the government of President Xi Jinping will deliver its first one-year work report.