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 by Uighur separatists.
State media said 33 people were killed and 130 injured, and police fatally shot four of the assailants.
The attackers, most of them dressed in black, stormed the Kunming Train Station in Yunnan Province and attacked people in the late evening, 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.”
One suspect was arrested, Xinhua said. Evidence at the scene showed that it was “a terrorist attack carried out by Xinjiang separatist forces,” the municipal government said, according to Xinhua. The report could not be verified. Xinhua said authorities considered it to be “an organized, premeditated violent terrorist attack.”
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 the assault Saturday took place about 620 miles to the southeast in Yunnan, which has not had a history of such unrest.
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, was en route to Kunming, according to the Communist Party-run People’s Daily.
The violence in Kunming came at a sensitive time as political leaders in Beijing prepared for the opening Wednesday 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.
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 rushing injured people to hospitals.
The 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.
More than 60 victims of the 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 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.
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.
The Security Management Bureau under the Ministry of Public Security called the incident a “severe violent crime” at its official Sina Weibo account.
The Kunming Railway Station, in the southeastern area of the city, is one of the largest railway stations in southwest China.
