Officials Fear Attacks in Run-Up to Games
By Jill Drew
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
KUNMING, China, July 22 -- Two explosions on separate buses during Monday morning's rush hour killed at least two people and injured 14 others in downtown Kunming, the capital of southwest China's Yunnan province, according to the local public security bureau.
Police said preliminary findings showed the blasts were deliberate, making them the first clear-cut acts of intentional violence against civilians this summer, something Beijing has feared as it prepares to host the Olympic Games next month. The government has installed tough security measures throughout the country, including mobilizing a counterterrorism force of 100,000 to be on hand during the Games.
No one asserted immediate responsibility for the explosions. Police quickly cordoned off the areas to collect evidence. Witnesses said that the two damaged buses were towed away within hours of the blasts and that the street was reopened to traffic by late evening.
Photos from the scene of one of the blasts show a bus with a gash ripped in its side behind the driver's seat and broken glass littering the street.
The first explosion occurred about 7:10 a.m. on Kunming's main thoroughfare, state-controlled New China News Agency reported. The second occurred at 8:05 a.m. on the same street, West Renmin Road.
"Broken glass was all over the ground," said one man who rode his bicycle by one of the stricken buses about 40 minutes after the blast. He did not stop to find out details. "I was scared," he said.
Police set up roadblocks and were checking cars leaving the city Monday night. There was extra security at the airport and several police officers were at the city bus depot. A detective team sent by the Public Security Ministry in Beijing arrived in Kunming on Monday afternoon to assist in the investigation.
Violent acts are rare in China, where the police and military presence is high. In May, a bus exploded in Shanghai, killing three people. Authorities blamed it on a passenger carrying flammable liquids and did not rule it an act of terrorism.
The Chinese government announced this month that it had detained 82 people in the restive province of Xinjiang in western China, on suspicion they were plotting attacks on the Games. It recently convicted and executed three people it said were members of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, an underground separatist group in Xinjiang that has fought for independence from China on behalf of the region's Muslim Uighur inhabitants. The group orchestrated a number of fatal bombings in the province during the 1990s.
On July 19, two people were killed by Yunnan police when they fired rubber bullets into a crowd of about 400 people who had confronted police when they came to deal with protests against a local rubber firm. The area is home to three ethnic minority groups.
Li Wei, director of the center for counter-terrorism studies at China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations in Beijing, said there is too little information available about the bus explosions to judge if they were terrorist attacks. "People will think the aim is the Olympics," Li said. "But this case might be caused by social conflict or some individuals who have some extreme ideas."
China has concentrated security efforts in the five cities hosting Olympic events: Beijing, Qingdao, Shenyang, Tianjin and Shanghai. The government installed scanners to search subway passengers in major cities; requires identification for people traveling by train and long-distance bus; and erected checkpoints with sniffer dogs along major roads near Olympic venues.
Armed police officers have also locked down large parts of Xinjiang and Tibetan areas, following widespread protests in March against Chinese rule.
Li said anti-terrorism measures should be beefed up in other areas of China. "Terrorists always like to turn to regions or cities where the preventive measures are weak," he said.
A reporter for a local newspaper in Yunnan, the Life Daily News, interviewed relatives of some of those injured by the blast. She said the relatives of two women who were sitting in the back of the first bus described what they saw.
The bus had just pulled into the Panjiawan bus stop in the heart of downtown Kunming, the people said. There were 11 people, including the driver, on board. The riders saw a young man, about 20 years old, leave his seat four rows behind the driver and get off the bus. He left behind a black bag. Seconds later, the bus exploded.
A Kunming police officer said that if the witness account was correct, then the suspect's image was probably captured by one of several cameras along West Renmin Road.
One woman, identified by police as Wang Dezhi, was killed and her fiance, who was sitting across the aisle from her, had his left arm injured, the witnesses said. The relatives of a 74-year-old man said he was just paying to board the bus when the explosion occurred. He was lacerated by flying glass and was admitted to the local hospital.
Police reported that in addition to the two confirmed dead, one person was severely injured and the others had relatively minor injuries.
During the Tuesday morning rush hour, there were many fewer passengers on the route followed by the buses attacked Monday. But one woman, who said she rode the bus every day, said she was not afraid to ride it this morning. "Yesterday was a rare incident," she said.
Researchers Liu Songjie, Liu Liu and Zhang Jie contributed to this report.
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