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Three killed in China's Tiananmen Square as jeep crashes into crowd Three killed in China's Tiananmen Square as jeep crashes into crowd
(35 minutes later)
Three people have been killed and more than 11 injured by a jeep that veered into a crowd, crashed and caught fire in front of Beijing's Forbidden City in Tiananmen Square. Three people were killed and 11 injured when a jeep ploughed through a crowd, crashed and caught fire in central Beijing's Tiananmen Square, the site of a bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in 1989.
The three dead were passengers in the car and most of the injured were tourists, police said. Police evacuated and sealed off the square, which lies across a broad thoroughfare from the main gate of the Forbidden City, soon after the vehicle crashed at around noon on Monday. A police officer at its north-east corner told a crowd of flustered tourists that there was an "activity" in the square and that it would be closed indefinitely.
The vehicle burst into flames after crashing into one of the ancient stone bridges leading to Tiananmen Gate, according to the Beijing police blog. No other details were given and it was unclear whether the incident on Monday was accidental or deliberate. Three people in the jeep – a driver and two passengers – died in the crash, according to Xinhua, China's official newswire. The 11 injured people, who included "many tourists and police on duty" according to Xinhua, have been taken to nearby hospitals. The reasons for the crash are still unknown.
Tiananmen Gate is one of the southern entrances to the former imperial palace and stands across several lanes of busy traffic from Tiananmen Square. It is usually busy with tourists from China and overseas. Pictures of the crash were posted online but quickly deleted by internet censors. One showed the charred shell of a four-wheel-drive engulfed in flames on the pedestrian walkway between the square and the Forbidden City, below a large portrait of Mao Zedong. Another one, taken at a distance, showed a plume of grey smoke rising above the historic imperial palace's high red walls.
The area around the square is one of China's most closely guarded and politically sensitive public venues. Just to the west lies the Great Hall of the People, the seat of China's parliament, and many of China's top leaders live and work a few hundred metres away in the tightly guarded Zhongnanhai compound. A young European woman living in Beijing said she had witnessed the aftermath of the crash as she left a nearby underground station at a quarter past noon. "What I immediately saw was a man on the ground, in his mid-60s. He didn't look like he was from the city – quite rural, maybe," she said. "He was unconscious, potentially not alive any more – very pale and discoloured. His head and his upper body were in a pool of blood."
Tiananmen Square is also heavily policed to guard against political protests. She added: "A couple of metres further, there was a woman sitting on the ground who was conscious, and she was bent over and clutching her left thigh. And I could see that she was bleeding a lot."
The square was the focus of a 1989 pro-democracy movement that was violently suppressed by the military. The woman, who did not witness the crash itself, said a fire engine, an ambulance and a police car had sped past her as she walked away from the square. "I walked on a bit, and then saw a civilian and a security guard rushing towards the unconscious man on the ground," she said. "It looked like the civilian man was crying – he was really distressed."
Tiananmen Square has been one of China's most politically sensitive locations since 4 June 1989, when People's Liberation Army soldiers fired on unarmed pro-democracy protesters, killing hundreds.
The square – now a popular tourist site – is flecked with security cameras and closely watched by scattered crowds of uniformed and plainclothes security agents.
Two reporters from Agence France-Presse were detained on the scene "with images deleted from their digital equipment", the newswire reported. A BBC team was also briefly detained, according to a tweet by one of the agency's reporters.
Within minutes of the crash, authorities erected high blue and green barriers around the site and temporarily blocked roads leading to the square. Transport authorities posted to their microblog that the underground station on Tiananmen's east side had been closed.
By late afternoon, the wreckage had been cleared and parts of the square reopened.
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