Yang Haifei, a local resident, told state media the station transformed in an instant into a scene of panic and confusion, with everyone running away from the men in black. Yang said he was slashed in the chest and back. Those who were slower in getting out of the way were the most severely injured, he said, “They just fell on the ground.”
Xinhua quoted a 50-year-old farmer at the local hospital who said her husband was killed in the attack. Chen Guizhen said she and her husband had bought tickets for new jobs in a nearby city.
Xinhua described her holding an ID card covered in blood belonging to her husband and saying, “Why are the terrorists so cruel?”
The train attack comes on the heels of a spate of incidents that Chinese authorities have identified as acts of terrorism, including a jeep that crashed into Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in October. The jeep killed three who were inside and two pedestrians and injured at least 40 others. Authorities attributed the attack to men who appeared to be Muslim extremists, and a resulting increase in anti-terrorism security since then has focused on ethnic minorities, particularly Muslim Uighurs in the Western region of Xinjiang.
Many Uighur leaders have condemned the violence but also continued to report oppression by the official policies of China’s authoritarian government and by widespread discrimination within Chinese society.
Liu Liu in Beijing contributed to this report.
Article Appeared @http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/knife-attack-at-chinese-train-station-leaves-28-dead-more-than-100-injured/2014/03/01/0b20ed8e-a195-11e3-9ba6-800d1192d08b_story.html?hpid=z4