4TH LD: 2 die in China bus blasts, 'sabotage' blamed

0 Comments | Asian Political News, July 28, 2008

BEIJING, July 21 Kyodo

(EDS: UPDATING)

Chinese police said Monday that two bus explosions that killed two people and injured 14 more in Kunming, capital of Yunnan Province, early in the day were an act of ''sabotage.''

An official at the provincial Public Security Bureau, who declined to give his name, said it was too early to say if terrorists were to blame for planting explosive devices on the buses, but called it a ''deliberate act of sabotage.''

''The investigation is still continuing,'' he told Kyodo News.

State-run media have reported that officials from the Ministry of Public Security have been sent to Kunming from Beijing to help in the investigation.

The two explosions happened less than an hour of each other on buses both traveling on Route 54 through the center of Kunming, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

The explosions come as the Chinese government has mounted a huge security operation ahead of the Beijing Olympics, saying the Games are a potential terrorist target.

Nearly 100,000 members of the security forces have been deployed on counterterrorism duties in the run-up to the Olympics next month.

According to Xinhua, the first explosion occurred during morning rush-hour at 7:10 a.m. near a bus stop on West Renmin Road, killing 30-year-old woman Wang Dezhi, while the second one happened at 8:10 a.m. at the nearby intersection of West Renmin and Changyuan roads, killing 26-year-old man Chen Shifei. Both were from Yunnan.

State TV broadcast images of the two buses, showing part of the side of each vehicle apparently blown out in the blasts. Glass and other debris were scattered across the road at both scenes.

Wang's husband, Han Guangming, was quoted by Xinhua as saying they had been traveling home on the bus to celebrate their child's birthday.

''My wife is gone and I'm injured. I feel it's the end of the world,'' he said.

Zhang Lin, an eyewitness at the first explosion in which Wang died, was quoted as saying she heard a huge blast while she was in a nearby building.

''At first I took it for an earthquake, but I looked through an office window and saw the left side of a bus was blown off,'' she said.

The Chinese government has said in recent weeks that it has uncovered several terrorist plots ahead of the Beijing Olympics conceived by Muslim separatists from China's northwestern region of Xinjiang.

Exiles from the area say the threat has been massively exaggerated to justify tighter security in that restive part of the country, which has its own distinctive language and culture.

The government also blamed separatists from Xinjiang for a series of bus bombings in the 1990s, including the killing of nine people on buses in the regional capital of Urumqi in 1997.

But cases have also been recorded of criminals, or people with grudges, planting bombs in China, where industrial explosives are more easily obtainable than guns.

Sixteen people were killed in an explosion on a bus in Wuhan in central China in 1999 after a farm worker detonated a homemade device, apparently because he was angry his girlfriend left him.

Meanwhile, state-run media have reported that security has been increased in Yunnan, with increased police patrols and tighter security at border crossings to stop any suspects fleeing the country.