BEIJING – More than 10 knife-wielding attackers slashed people at a train station in southwestern China late Saturday in what authorities called a terrorist attack, and police fatally shot five of the assailants, leaving 28 people dead and 113 injured, state media said.
The attackers, most of them dressed in black, stormed the Kunming Train Station in Yunnan Province and started attacking people in the late evening, witness Yang Haifei told the official Xinhua News Agency in an interview from a hospital where he was being treated for chest and back wounds.
“I saw a person come straight at me with a long knife, and I ran away with everyone,” he told Xinhua, adding that people who were slower ended up severely injured. “They just fell on the ground.”
Xinhua did not identify who might have been responsible for the attack but said authorities considered it to be “an organized, premeditated violent terrorist attack.”
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.
Xi called for ‘’all-out efforts” to bring the culprits to justice.
A Xinhua reporter on the scene in Kunming said several suspects had been “controlled” while police continued their investigation of people at the station. The reporter said firefighters and emergency medical personnel were at the station and rushing injured people to hospitals for treatment.
The authorities said five suspects were shot dead but their identities had not yet been confirmed, Xinhua reported. Overall, 28 people were confirmed dead and 113 injured, it said.
State media outlets did not immediately cite a motive for the attack or say what group might be behind it. But, they typically use the phrase “terrorist” for attacks blamed on separatists from the far western region of Xinjiang, home to a simmering rebellion against Chinese rule among parts of the Muslim Uighur population.
Most attacks blamed on Uighur separatists take place in Xinjiang, but Saturday’s assault took place more than 600 miles to the southeast in Yunnan, which has not had a history of such unrest. However, a suicide car attack blamed on Uighur separatists, which killed five people at Beijing’s Tiananmen Gate last November, raised alarms that militants may be aiming to strike at targets throughout the country.
More than 60 victims of Saturday’s attack were taken to Kunming No. 1 People’s Hospital, where at least a dozen bodies also could be seen, said Xinhua reporters at the hospital.
At a guard pavilion in front of the train station, three victims were crying. One of them, Yang Ziqing, told Xinhua they were waiting for a train to Shanghai when a knife-wielding man suddenly came at them.
“I can’t find my husband, and his phone went unanswered,” Yang sobbed.
Pictures on Sina Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, showed bodies covered in blood at the station.
The Security Management Bureau under the Ministry of Public Security called the incident a “severe violent crime” at its official Sina Weibo account.
“No matter what motives the murderers hold, the killing of innocent people is against kindness and justice. The police will crack down the crimes in accordance with the law without any tolerance. May the dead rest in peace,” it read.
