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 four of the assailants, leaving 33 people dead and 130 others wounded, state media said.
The attackers stormed the Kunming train station in Yunnan province and started attacking people, 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,” Yang said.
One suspect was arrested, Xinhua said. Evidence foundat the scene of the attack showed that it was “a terrorist attack carried out by Xinjiang separatist forces,” the agency quoted the municipal government as saying. Authorities considered it to be “an organized, premeditated violent terrorist attack.”
The violence began about 9 p.m., when the assailants, all wearing similar clothing, entered the square in front of the train station as well as a ticket sales hall, according to the official Yunnan news service.
“They slashed at whoever they saw, and at the scene there were many people injured,” said the China News Service, another state-run news agency.
Hundreds of police officers quickly converged on the scene, and several of the attackers were shot dead, according to the news reports.
According to the newspaper Beijing News, one witness, Wang Dinggeng, a student, said the attackers pulled long knives from underneath their garments and began slashing at people.
“Inside the hall,” Wang said, “there were still many people lined up to buy tickets, and the people outside came pouring in saying, ‘Murder!’”
In an indication of how seriously authorities viewed the attack - one of China’s deadliest in recent years - the country’s top police official, Politburo member Meng Jianzhu, arrived in Kunming this morning and went straight to the hospital to visit the wounded and their families, the Communist Party-run People’s Daily reported.
The Ministry of Public Security issued a statement vowing that there would be no mercy for the assailants.
“No matter what the motive of the perpetrators, to spill innocent blood is to become an enemy of all decency under heaven,” the ministry’s statement said. “The police will resolutely strike hard according to the law, and there will be no soft-handedness.”
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. In a statement, the Security Management Bureau under the Ministry of Public Security said that police will “crack down on the crimes in accordance with the law without any tolerance.”
Last week, ahead of the meetings in Beijing, authorities announced they were stepping up security in the far Western region of Xinjiang and four other northwestern areas: Gansu, Shaanxi and Qinghai provinces and the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region. Police in those areas are also to receive anti-terrorism training, state-run media outlets reported.
However, those areas are not near Yunnan, which borders Vietnam, Laos and Burma.
A Xinhua reporter on the scene in Kunming said several suspects had been “controlled” while police continued their investigation of people at the train station. The reporter said firefighters and emergency medical personnel were at the station and rushing injured people to hospitals for treatment.
Authorities said four suspects were shot dead but that their identities had not yet been confirmed, and police were hunting for the remaining attackers, Xinhua reported. The news agency said 29 people described as civilians were confirmed dead and 130 injured.
The far western region of Xinjiang is home to a simmering rebellion against Chinese rule by separatists 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 620 miles to the southeast in Yunnan, which has not had a history of such unrest. However, a suicide car attack blamed on Uighur separatiststhat 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, according to 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 that they were waiting for a train to Shanghai when a knife-wielding man suddenly came at them.
“My two town-fellows’ husbands have been rushed to hospital, but I can’t find my husband, and his phone went unanswered,” Yang sobbed.
Xinhua said some victims were migrant workers who were returning to factories after family reunions over the Chinese New Year.
Footage in China’s state broadcaster CCTV showed a heavy police presence near the station and plainclothes agents wrapping a long knife in a plastic bag as investigators collected evidence after the attacks.
Pictures on Sina Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, showed bodies covered in blood at the station.
Another person claiming to be a witness posted an account online saying that sometime after 9:24 p.m. he was waiting at the ticket counter when chaos erupted. He wrote that he saw a man in a yellow jacket and woman in black clothing carrying out the attack, and that one had a knife approximately 2 feet long.
The Kunming station, located in the southeastern area of the city, is one of the largest railway stations in southwest China.
Trains bound for the station were diverted, local TV station K6 said.
Information for this article was contributed by Didi Tang and Fu Ting of The Associated Press; by Chris Buckley and David Barboza of The New York Times, and by Julie Makinen of the Los Angeles Times.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 03/02/2014