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China vows harsh crackdown after train station massacre

KUNMING (China) — Authorities blamed a slashing rampage that killed 29 people and wounded 143 at a train station in south-west China on separatists from the country’s restive far west and vowed a harsh crackdown yesterday, while residents wondered why their laid-back city was targeted.

People praying for the massacre victims yesterday outside the Kunming Railway Station, where more than 10 assailants slashed scores of people with knives on Saturday night in western China's Yunnan province. Photo: AP

People praying for the massacre victims yesterday outside the Kunming Railway Station, where more than 10 assailants slashed scores of people with knives on Saturday night in western China's Yunnan province. Photo: AP

KUNMING (China) — Authorities blamed a slashing rampage that killed 29 people and wounded 143 at a train station in south-west China on separatists from the country’s restive far west and vowed a harsh crackdown yesterday, while residents wondered why their laid-back city was targeted.

Police fatally shot four of the assailants — putting the overall death toll at 33 — and captured another after the attack late on Saturday in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province, the official Xinhua news agency said. But authorities were searching for at least five more of the black-clad attackers.

State broadcaster CCTV said two of the assailants were women, including one of the slain and the one detained.

President Xi Jinping ordered “all-out efforts” to punish the assailants, “crack down on violent terrorist activities” and safeguard social stability, Xinhua reported.

Echoing Mr Xi’s comments, China’s top police official, Politburo member Meng Jianzhu, said: “All-out efforts should be made to treat the injured people, severely punish terrorists according to the law, and prevent the occurrence of similar cases.’’

In an indication of how seriously the authorities viewed the attack, Mr Meng arrived in Kunming early yesterday, where he visited the injured. Public Security Minister Guo Shengkun has also gone to Kunming, according to Xinhua.

The attackers’ identities have not been confirmed, but evidence shows it was “a terrorist attack carried out by Xinjiang separatist forces”, Xinhua said. The far western region of Xinjiang is home to a simmering rebellion against Chinese rule by some members of the Muslim Uighur population, and the government has responded there with heavy-handed security.

The police in Kunming yesterday were rounding up members of the city’s small Uighur community, believed to number no more than several dozen, for questioning in the attack.

Most attacks blamed on Uighur separatists take place in Xinjiang, where clashes between Uighurs and members of China’s ethnic Han majority are frequent, but Saturday’s assault happened more than 1,500km to the south-east in Yunnan, which has not had a history of such unrest.

The violence in Kunming came at a sensitive time, with political leaders in Beijing preparing for Wednesday’s opening of the annual legislature, where Mr Xi’s government will deliver its first one-year work report.

In an English-language commentary yesterday, Xinhua journalist Gui Tao called the assault China’s 9/11.

Kunming residents expressed dismay at both the attack and the conditions within China that could have allowed it to happen.

Restaurant worker Xie Yulong said the attackers were worse than animals. But he also expressed sympathy toward ethnic Uighurs, saying their region has come under severe security crackdowns in recent months.

“It’s the pressure,” Mr Xie said. “Beijing has put too much pressure on them since Xi Jinping. They are under so much pressure they do not want to live.”

Another resident, Mr Jiang Hua, said the attack has made people scared to go out at night, adding that the local authorities should be held accountable for providing public safety.

Witnesses described assailants dressed in black storming the train station late Saturday evening and slashing people indiscriminately with large knives and machetes.

Word of the violence spread quickly, with graphic pictures that showed bodies covered in blood posted to the Twitter-like microblogging service Sina Weibo — posts that were later deleted by government censors. State television showed police wrapping a long, sword-like knife in a plastic bag. Shop and restaurant workers said hundreds of people had fled into their stores seeking refuge.

A 20-year-old university student, Mr Wu Yuheng, said the attackers had tried to target people’s heads. One had swiped his long knife and just nicked him on the scalp.

“I was terrified ... they attacked us like crazy swordsmen, and mostly they went for the head and the shoulders, those parts of the body, to kill,” he said as he lay on a bed at Kunming’s No 1 People’s Hospital, where scores of patients from the attack spilled into corridors from overflowing wards.

Alarms over a possible spread of militant attacks to soft targets beyond Xinjiang borders were first raised in October, when a suicide car attack blamed on three ethnic Uighurs killed five people, including the attackers, at Beijing’s Tiananmen Gate.

Dr Sean Roberts, a cultural anthropologist at George Washington University, said the Kunming violence would be a new kind of attack for ethnic Uighurs — premeditated, well-organised and outside Xinjiang — but still rudimentary in weaponry.

“If it is true that it was carried out by Uighurs, it’s much different than anything we’ve seen to date,” he said.

But he added that it is still unclear whether there is any organised Uighur militant group, and that attacks so far do not appear linked to any “global terrorist network, because we’re not seeing things like sophisticated explosives or essentially sophisticated tactics”. AGENCIES

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