By Charles Hutzler
BEIJING--More than 10 people armed with knives rampaged through a train station in southwestern China, killing 29 people and injuring 130 others in what the official Xinhua News Agency called a planned terrorist attack.
Xinhua, citing unnamed government officials in the provincial capital of Kunming, identified the assailants in the Saturday night attack as separatists from Xinjiang, China's northwestern region where some members of a mainly Muslim ethnic group, the Uighurs, have fought against Chinese rule.
If confirmed, the attack would be one of the deadliest by Uighur separatists in the decadeslong, sometimes violent campaign and would mark a departure in tactics. Targets in the past have usually been police, paramilitary barracks and other symbols of Chinese government authority inside Xinjiang.
Saturday's attack took place in the railway station in the middle of Kunming, a gateway to Yunnan province, a popular tourist destination. Xinhua said the train station was crowded with travelers and migrant workers when the attackers began stabbing people around 9:20 p.m. It quoted witnesses saying the attackers wore black and carried long knives.
Police shot dead at least four attackers and continued to hunt for others, Xinhua said. The Chinese leadership sent its top security official, Politburo member Meng Jianzhu, to Kunming to lead the investigation.
Separatist violence has ticked up in recent years in Xinjiang, which abuts Central Asia and has important oil and gas reserves. Chinese authorities and experts on the region say that some separatists have become radicalized by the more militant strains of Islam found in neighboring Pakistan and the Middle East. Exiled Uighurs and rights group say increasingly intrusive police measures and restrictions on religious practices have incited a backlash by some Uighurs.
In one of the few incidents outside Xinjiang that China has blamed on Uighur separatists, three members of a family from Xinjiang crashed a sport-utility vehicle into a pillar near the Tiananmen gate in central Beijing in October. Two tourists were killed in addition to the three people in the vehicle.
Write to Charles Hutzler at charles.hutzler@wsj.com
Source: Top Stories - Google News - http://ift.tt/Ni04sW
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