Alleged separatist attack in China kills at least 31
URUMQI, China — Zhou Ping had just taken out herwallet to pay for her vegetables at a busy street market when the SUV burst through the barriers, overturning tables laden with fresh produce and knocking the 50-year-old retiree to the pavement.
The vehicle came to a halt, then exploded. Two minutes later, another SUV plowed down the road and exploded aswell.
At least 31 people died in the attack Thursday morning in Urumqi, the capital of China’s northwesternmost region, Xinjiang. Zhou considered herself lucky to escape with only a lost wallet. Her older sister was less fortunate, suffering deep gashes in her eyelid, legs and back.
“When I got up, I was covered in vegetables and dirt and blood,” said Zhou, who spoke in the hallway outside her sister’s hospital room Thursday night. “I was in complete shock. My wallet — it was like it exploded.”
The attack on the morning market was the most sophisticated and perhaps the deadliest of a recent spate ofbombingsandstabbings attributed to separatists from the Uighur population, a mostly Muslim ethnic minority in the northwest.
Ethnic and cultural tensions have been rising in Xinjiang for decades as more Han Chinese move into the region. Beijing officially treats Xinjiang as an autonomous region, like Tibet to its south, but Uighurs complain that the central government has stifled religious and cultural freedoms. More extreme elements have been fighting for a separate state; the area briefly declared independence in 1933.
“The Chinese government has the confidence and capability to crack down on the audacious terrorists, who will never achieve their purposes,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said Thursday in Beijing.
The attack took place at 7:50 a.m., the peak time at the market.
Witnesses said the SUVs drove through a barricade and that the occupants tossed explosives from the vehicles’ windows.
The preliminary toll of the attack vies with a knife assault March 1 at the Kunming railroad station, in which 33 died, as one of the worst such incidents in recent memory.
Since January 2013, 170 people have died as a result of Uighur separatist attacks, according to the Lanzhou-based Institute for Central Asia Studies. Experts say the attackers are becoming bolder and more professional in their tactics.
“Car ramming is a tactic militants in Xinjiang have been using since 2011. What is new is the power of the explosives. It’s possible that militants from outside the country are teaching those in China, either via the Internet or materials that they send in to Xinjiang,” said Jacob Zenn, an analyst of African and Eurasian affairs with the Washington-based Jamestown Foundation.
Beijing has limited news of such attacks, releasing few details and avoiding prolonged media coverage. Experts say the tactic may be driven by embarrassment at the separatists’ ability to find holes in state security but also by a strategic desire to deprive the militants of the instability they seek to foment.
On the street, meanwhile, official reaction followed the script from previous attacks. By nightfall Thursday, the blood and debris had been cleared by street cleaners, aided by heavy rain.
“People are scared,” said a 65-year-old resident who gave only his surname, Mao. “These attacks are getting better planned and better organized.”