ISLAM’S TAKING ON CHINA: China – 5 dead, 38 injured after Muslim suicide car attack in Tiananmen Square
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.
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