China's Xi demands action after 3 killed in attack

 

Urumqi, China: Chinese President Xi Jinping demanded "decisive" action against terrorism after a bomb and slashing attack at a Xinjiang train station killed three people and injured 79 while he was wrapping up a tour of the far-western region.

 

The official People's Daily newspaper's microblog reported on Thursday that two of those killed were attackers who had strapped bombs to their bodies. The report could not immediately be confirmed.

 

A group of knife-wielding attackers slashed at passengers and set off explosives near an exit of the South Station in the regional capital, Urumqi, late Wednesday, official reports said.

 

The attack followed Xi's four-day trip, in which he visited local officials and police to stress the government's security efforts in the region, which has experienced rising violence blamed on radical Islamists and separatists.

 

A 57-year-old woman being treated at the Xinjiang Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital said she had just got off a train from Sichuan province and was walking outside to meet her son when the blast went off.

 

"I saw I had shreds of flesh and blood in my hair and on my clothes. It was terrifying," said the woman, who would only give her surname, Peng.

 

Another survivor, a man who also gave only his surname, Liu, said the station exit had been crowded with people when the blast went off.

 

"After the blast, there was chaos. Everyone was panicking," said Liu. Police and firefighters quickly arrived and Liu said the injured were taken to hospitals in ambulances and commandeered taxis.

 

Tensions between Chinese and ethnic Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang have been simmering for years, particularly since riots in 2009 in Urumqi left nearly 200 people dead, according to official figures. Beijing blames the violence on overseas-based instigators, but has offered little evidence.

 

There was no immediate word on arrests and it was unclear whether Xi was still in the region at the time of the attack. Information about events in the area about 2,500 kilometers (1,550 miles) west of Beijing is tightly controlled and it was difficult to immediately verify many of the details.

 

"At the moment, it is acknowledged to be a terrorist attack. What is yet to be found out is who did this and for what purpose under whose instigation," the official Xinhua News Agency said Thursday.

 

Although authorities provided no details of suspects, the Chinese president said in his comments after the attack that authorities were in a long-term battle against Xinjiang separatists. Recent attacks blamed on separatists have appeared increasingly organized and more likely to target civilians as well as authorities.

 

"The battle to combat violence and terrorism will not allow even a moment of slackness, and decisive actions must be taken to resolutely suppress the terrorists' rampant momentum," Xi said in comments published on the front page of official newspapers Thursday and carried by state television.

 

Train service was suspended for about two hours, Xinhua said. It said security was tightened at all transport hubs in the city, which has a mainly Han Chinese population who are distinct from Xinjiang's native Turkic Muslim Uighur ethnic group.

 

Witnesses said the area outside the train station was cordoned off overnight.

 

But by afternoon Thursday, a public holiday, the train station bustled with hundreds of travelers bringing luggage and waiting in orderly lines. Paramilitary police with rifles and helmets and riot police with bulletproof vests and shields patrolled and guarded positions in groups of about a dozen each.

 

Street sellers hawked stacks of naan bread, while shopkeepers repaired minor damage to signs and lights on storefronts. One shopkeeper refused to let people bring their bags into his convenience store and held a short, thick wooden pole in front of him.

 

Photos circulating briefly on Chinese social media sites showed scattered luggage near the station's exit and a heavy presence of armed men. Xinhua said the blast took place between the station's exit and a nearby bus stop.

 

Rian Thum, a professor at Loyola University in New Orleans who specializes in Uighur history and issues, said the use of explosives to target civilians "would mark an alarming deviation from previous patterns of Uighur political violence."

 

"Most violent resistance had previously been directed at police officers, soldiers, and officials, often using knives and farm tools. The attack at the Urumchi train station, if it was carried out by Uighurs, suggests an emerging pattern of more civilian targets and violence on a larger scale," he said.

 

Recent attacks appear to point to a greater level of planning - along with continuing Chinese security and intelligence lapses despite massive growth in spending in those areas.

 

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.

 

In March, five knife-wielding men and women believed to be Uighurs slashed at crowds indiscriminately at a railway station in southwestern China, killing 29 people.

 

While Beijing faults separatists for raising ethnic tensions, government critics say restrictive and discriminatory policies and practices have alienated the Uighurs. They say Han people have flooded Xinjiang and benefited from its economic growth while Uighurs have felt excluded.

 

China has smothered Xinjiang with additional security and imposed additional restrictions on Uighur travel rights, culture and religious practices. That, say Uighur activists, is exacerbating the resentments driving the violence.

 

"The Urumqi explosion again proves that forceful repression is not a solution to the problem," said Dilxat Raxit, a spokesman for the World Uyghur Congress based in Germany.

 

During his visit, Xi urged government officials to maintain social stability, promote growth, improve living standards and strengthen ethnic unity, according to state media reports.

 

Xi told officials that the long-term stability of Xinjiang is vital to the whole country's reform, development and stability, Xinhua reported.