March 2, 2014 2:07 a.m. ET
More than ten people armed with knives rampaged through a train station in southwestern China killing dozens of people and injuring 130 others in what the official Xinhua News Agency called a planned terrorist attack.
BEIJING—More than 10 people armed with knives rampaged through a train station in southwestern China, leaving 33 people dead and injuring 130 others in what state media called a terrorist attack by separatists from the Xinjiang region.
The government news agency Xinhua said the train station in the center of Kunming city was crowded with travelers and migrant workers when the attackers began stabbing people around 9:20 p.m. Saturday. It quoted witnesses saying the attackers wore black and carried long knives.
In addition to 29 people killed in the attack, police shot dead at least four suspected attackers, captured one and continued to hunt for others, Xinhua said.
Police officers investigate the scene outside a railway station in southwestern China. Associated Press
Xinhua, citing unnamed government officials in Kunming, identified the assailants as separatists from Xinjiang, China's northwestern region where some members of a mainly Muslim ethnic group, the Uighurs, have rebelled 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, and attacks have mainly been staged inside Xinjiang.
President Xi Jinping, in remarks carried by state media, didn't say where the attackers came from but called on law enforcement to solve the case, "severely punish the terrorists in accordance with the law and firmly strike down this aggression." China's top security official, Politburo member Meng Jianzhu, went to Kunming to lead the investigation and was shown on state television meeting with injured in the hospital.
The attack comes just ahead of this week's opening of the annual session of China's national legislature and a concurrent meeting of a government advisory body—events that always bring higher levels of security.
Some local governments appeared to notch up security further. In the Sichuanese capital of Chengdu, 400 miles (650 kilometers) north of Kunming, police said they were launching an emergency contingency plan, and stepping up armed patrols by police at train stations, airports, shopping malls and elsewhere.
Social media posts mixed anger and sadness. Lin Zhibo, an official at the Communist Party's People's Daily newspaper in Gansu province, said on his verified account on the Sina Weibo social media platform that the victims must be mourned and attackers harshly dealt with. "The crime of betraying the country deserves death," he wrote.
Reports and posts about the attack appeared to be strictly controlled, with many newspapers republishing the official Xinhua version of events. On Chinese social media, users posted photos purporting to be from the Kunming railway station, showing bodies lying on the station's floors, with blood pooling underneath them. Some photos were later deleted.
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 groups say increasingly intrusive police measures and restrictions on religious practices have incited a backlash by some Uighurs.
The violence poses security and political problems for the Chinese leadership. Tensions between Uighurs and the majority Han Chinese have run high in Xinjiang for years. Ethnic rioting between them in Xinjiang's capital, Urumqi, in 2009 left nearly 200 people dead.
Xinhua said that before Saturday's railway station assault, the deadliest attack on civilians occurred in Xinjiang's Lukqun township in June in which at least 24 people were killed. What happened in Lukqun remains unclear. At the time Xinhua reported that Uighurs brandished long knives and killed civilians as they charged government offices. Overseas-based Uighur groups dispute that account.
In one of the few incidents outside Xinjiang, China blamed the separatist East Turkestan Islamic Movement for crashing 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—members of a Uighur family—in the vehicle.
—Brian Spegele contributed to this article.
Write to Charles Hutzler at charles.hutzler@wsj.com
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