via Police focus on Muslim separatists after Tiananmen car attack – CBS News.
Chinese police were seeking information
Tuesday on two ethnic Uighur suspects believed linked to an apparent
suicide car attack near Tiananmen Square in the country’s capital that
killed five people and injured 38.
Police released no word about a possible
motive for Monday’s incident at Beijing’s Forbidden City, one of China’s
most politically sensitive and heavily guarded public spaces. But
investigators sent a notice to hotels in the city aimed at tracing the
movements of two suspects, and possibly at uncovering any other
conspirators.
It was unclear whether the two Uighurs
were believed to have perished in the car or were still at large, and
whether they may have been linked to militant groups in the western
region of Xinjiang, where radicals have been fighting a low-intensity
insurgency against Chinese rule for years.
If Monday’s incident was such an attack,
it would be the first in recent history outside of Xinjiang, and the
boldest and most ambitious given the high-profile target.
The sports utility vehicle veered inside a
barrier separating a crowded sidewalk from a busy avenue and then
plowed through pedestrians as it sped toward Tiananmen Gate, where it
crashed into a stone structure near a large portrait of Mao Zedong which
hangs near the entrance to the former imperial palace.
The vehicle’s three occupants were killed along with two bystanders, including a Filipino woman. The 38 injured included three other Filipinos and a Japanese man, police said.
The gate stands opposite sprawling Tiananmen Square, which was the focus of the 1989 pro-democracy movement that was violently suppressed by the military, and any incident there is highly sensitive.
If intended as a political statement,
Monday’s attack could hardly have picked a more significant target. Just
west of the square lies the Great Hall of the People, the seat of
China’s parliament, while many of China’s top leaders live and work just
a few hundred meters (yards) away in the tightly guarded Zhongnanhai
compound.
In Xinjiang this year, dozens of people
have been killed in clashes between security forces and Uighur
militants, who the government says have been inspired by global jihadist
teachings and joined al-Qaeda-inspired fighters in Syria.
China has provided little direct evidence
to back up those claims. However, Xinjiang borders Afghanistan and
unstable Central Asian states where militant Islamic violence is a
regular occurrence and Uighurs are believed to be among the militants
sheltering in Pakistan’s lawless northwestern region.
Authorities had earlier warned that
extremists were planning attacks outside the Xinjiang region. A
smothering security blanket has made organization difficult for the
extremists, denied them safe havens, and severely limited their access
to firearms and explosives.
Monday’s incident had every
appearance of being deliberate, since the driver apparently jumped a
curb and traveled about 400 meters (yards) to the spot where the car was
said to have caught fire. Along the way, it avoided trees,
street lights and at least one security checkpoint. The attackers also
struck during the lunch hour when security would have likely been
relatively slack.
Witnesses quoted in Chinese media said the
SUV’s driver honked his horn as he drove along the sidewalk, suggesting
mass murder was not the intention. Photos showed flames licking the
vehicle and a huge cloud of smoke, although there was no word on whether
an incendiary device had been activated or shots fired.
“The vehicle ran very fast, I could hear
people screaming all the way while the vehicle ploughed through the
crowds,” the Global Times newspaper quoted an unidentified female
witness as saying.
Authorities moved swiftly to clear the
scene of any evidence of the incident and national media provided only
slight coverage of what had happened.
Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs
spokesman Raul Hernandez told ABS-CBN TV in Manila that the Filipino who
died was the mother of two daughters and had been vacationing in
Beijing. He said her husband and one of her daughters were hospitalized
with fractures, while the other daughter suffered only minor injuries.
A Japanese Embassy spokesman, speaking on
the usual condition of anonymity, said the Japanese citizen remained
hospitalized but his injuries were not believed to be life threatening.
Police said the other tourist killed was a Chinese man from the southern province of Guangdong.
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