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China market bombing: Dozens killed after attackers hurl explosives into busy shopping area
China market bombing: At least 31 killed and almost 100 injured after attackers drive at shoppers and hurl explosives into busy street
(about 3 hours later)
A number of people are thought to have been killed after attackers hurled explosives in a busy open-air market in the volatile capital of China's western region of Xinjiang.
Terrorists armed with explosives have driven two cars at shoppers in a busy Chinese street market, killing at least 31 people and injuring nearly 100 in the deadliest attack on the Xinjiang region for five years.
The official Xinhua News Agency said several people were rushed to hospital and flames and heavy smoke was seen at the scene, which was cordoned off.
The “violent terrorist incident” occurred in the regional capital of Urumqi, in the heart of the volatile north-western province, Xinjiang regional officials said.
China's Ministry of Public Security has described the attack as a "serious violent terrorist incident". Sky News reported that 31 people were killed and more than 90 injured in the attack.
The two vehicles, described by the Xinhua News Agency as being large cross-country 4x4s, crashed through barriers between a road and the market at 7.50am.
The assailants reportedly drove through crowds of shoppers in off-road vehicles and threw explosives out the window before crashing head-on in the early morning attack in the city of Urumqi.
Attackers within the cars then reportedly threw explosives out of windows as they ploughed through the crowds, before crashing “head-on”, at which point one exploded.
It said one of the vehicles then exploded and quoted an eyewitness as saying there had been up to a dozen blasts in all.
Witnesses described up to a dozen large explosions in total, in the bloodiest incident in Xinjiang since a day of riots in 2009 killed almost 200.
A statement from the Xinjiang regional government said the attack happened at 7.50am local time and people had been killed and injured, but gave no further details.
Speaking to Xinhua in the aftermath of today’s attack, President Xi Jinping said the government would be taking a typically tough approach to dealing with those responsible. He pledged to “severely punish terrorists and spare no efforts in maintaining stability”.
“I heard four or five explosions. I was very scared. I saw three or four people lying on the ground,” said Fang Shaoying, the owner of a small supermarket near the scene of the blast.
China’s top police official, public security minister Guo Shengkun, has been dispatched to Urumqi to lead the investigation into today’s incident.
Photos from the scene posted to popular Chinese social media site Weibo showed at least three people lying in a street with a large fire in the distance giving off huge plumes of smoke. Others were sitting in the roady in shock, with vegetables, boxes and stools strewn around them.
The attack in Xinjiang left 31 people dead Though information from Xinjiang is strictly controlled, images posted to Sina Weibo, China’s closest equivalent to Twitter, appeared to show the attack took place at one end of a busy market lined with vegetable stalls.
Police in helmets and body armour were seen manning roadblocks as police cars, ambulances and fire engines arrived.
At least three fire engines could be seen attending the incident, with most of a wide junction at one point appearing to be ablaze.
Urumqi was the scene of a railway station bomb attack late last month that killed three people, including two attackers, and injured 79. Security in the city has been significantly tightened since the attack, which took place as Chinese leader Xi Jinping was concluding a visit to the region.
The incident has, like other recent attacks in the region, widely been blamed on the Uighur group of Islamic extremists. Though reports rarely include claims of responsibility, activists have said in the past that they are pushed to violence by discrimination from the central Chinese government and a limitation of their religious freedoms.
The city saw ethnic riots that killed nearly 200 people in 2009, but had been relatively quiet since then amid a smothering police presence.
A train station in Urumqi was also the scene of a suspected Uighur attack last month, which saw the deaths of three people, including two attackers, and 79 injured. That incident took place while President Xi was visiting the region.
The station attack and other violence have been blamed on radicals from among the region's native Turkic Uighur Muslim population seeking to overthrow Chinese rule in the region.
The most recent attacks suggest terrorists in China are becoming increasingly bold and well-coordinated across the whole country. In an unprecedented incident last year, three Uighur militants carried out a suicide attack with a vehicle against crowds near the Forbidden City gate in the heart of Beijing, killing two tourists.
Information about events in the area about 1,550 miles west of Beijing is tightly controlled.
In March, an attack with long knives saw 29 people stabbed to death at a train station in the southern city of Yunnan, which was also attributed to Uighurs.
Tensions between Chinese and ethnic Uighurs in Xinjiang have been simmering for years, but recent attacks - while still relatively crude - show an audaciousness and deliberateness that wasn't present before. They are also increasingly going after civilians, rather than the police and government targets of past years.
In an unprecedented incident last year, three Uighurs rammed a vehicle into crowds in a suicide attack near the Forbidden City gate in the heart of Beijing, killing themselves and two tourists.
And in March, 29 people were slashed and stabbed to death at a train station in the southern city of Yunnan blamed on Uighur extremists bent on waging jihad.
Uighur activists say the violence is being fuelled by restrictive and discriminatory policies and practices directed at Uighurs and a sense that the benefits of economic growth have largely accrued to Chinese migrants while excluding Uighurs. The knowledge that Muslims elsewhere are rising up against their governments also seems to be contributing to the increased militancy.
The latest attack came two days after courts in Xinjiang sentenced 39 people to prison after being convicted of crimes including organising and leading terrorist groups, inciting ethnic hatred, ethnic discrimination and the illegal manufacturing of guns.
Among those convicted was 25-year-old Maimaitiniyazi Aini, who received five years for inciting ethnic hatred and ethnic discrimination for comments he made in six chat groups involving 1,310 people, the Supreme Court said.
In another case, a Uighur man was jailed for 15 years after he preached jihad, or holy war, to his son and another young man, according to the court.
