Knife-wielding attackers kill 29 at Chinese train station; more than 100 injured

The government-run Xinhua News Agency described the Kunming train station assault as a “premeditated violent terrorist attack” and identified the group of more than 10 assailants as Uighur separatists from China’s restive Xinjiang region. Authorities shot dead four of the assailants and arrested one, according to Xinhua.

Local news in Kunming, the capital city of Yunnan province, depicted gruesome scenes of victims sprawled on the train station floor splattered in blood.

A coordinated attack of this size and nature is rare in China. China’s leaders quickly responded with statements from top officials, and the country’s top security officials were en route to the scene.

The mass stabbing comes at a particularly sensitive time as top officials from China’s Communist Party are gathering for their most important public meeting on Wednesday, an annual convening of its largely rubber-stamp legislature in Beijing. In a sign of the incident’s sensitivity, many comments about the attack on Chinese social media were censored, and the news did not appear on the front pages of many newspapers.

China’s President Xi Jinping ordered “all-out efforts” to punish the attackers, “crack down on violent terrorist activities in all forms, safeguard social stability and guarantee the safety of people’s lives and property,” according to Xinhua.

Meng Jianzhu, head of China’s domestic security, and Guo Shengkun, minister of public security are on their way to Kunming, state media said.

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