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Blast Hits Railway Station in Restive Western China Blast Hits Rail Station in Restive Western China
(about 4 hours later)
HONG KONG — An explosion hit a railroad station Wednesday evening in Urumqi, the capital of western China’s restive Xinjiang region, where President Xi Jinping had just concluded a visit. At least 50 people were injured, state media reported. HONG KONG — An explosion hit a railroad station Wednesday evening in Urumqi, the capital of western China’s restive Xinjiang region where President Xi Jinping had just concluded a visit, with state media reporting at least 50 people injured.
The blast took placet about 7 p.m. local time, the Xinhua News Agency reported. The police sealed off entrances to the square around the station and injured people were taken away in ambulances. While there was no immediate indication it was a deliberate attack, the blast was described by Chinese commentators and analysts as the work of Xinjiang’s militant Uighur separatists, probably meant as a message of defiance to Mr. Xi.
A report on the official Twitter account of the People’s Daily newspaper said there were at least 50 injuries. A photograph posted on the Twitter account showed charred luggage and debris scattered in front of a railway exit. The blast took place near the station’s exit about 7:10 p.m., around the time a passenger train from the city of Chengdu arrived, China Central Television reported on Sina Weibo, a Twitter-like microblogging service. The police sealed off entrances to the square around the station, in the southern part of Urumqi, and ambulances took the injured away.
The blast took place on the last day of a visit by Mr. Xi to the tense region, where he pushed for integration of the Uighur ethnic minority while vowing to combat violent acts by separatists. A report on the Twitter account of the official People’s Daily newspaper said there were at least 50 injuries. Photographs posted on the account showed charred luggage and debris scattered in a square next to the station. By 9 p.m., the railway station had reopened, with and passengers were seen entering with a police presence, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.
There were no immediate reports that Uighurs were involved in the railway station blast and no information about the ethnic makeup of the victims. The blast appeared timed to coincide with the last day of a visit by President Xi to the tense region, where he pushed for the integration of the Uighur ethnic minority into the wider Chinese society while vowing to combat violent acts by separatists.
A little less than half of Xinjiang’s population of 22 million are Uighurs, an ethnic Turkic group, many of them feeling dispossessed under Chinese rule. The region has been troubled by riots in recent years, with some Uighurs spreading those tensions to other parts of the country. An English-language editorial by Xinhua published later in the evening drew connections between the blast and an attack in March, when a group of Uighurs slashed 29 people to death at a railway station in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province in southwestern China.
In March, a group of Uighurs slashed 29 people to death at a railway station in Kunming, in the province of Yunnan in China’s southwest. A little less than half of Xinjiang’s population of 22 million are Uighurs, an ethnic Turkic group, and many feel dispossessed under Chinese rule. The region’s tensions sometimes escalate into violence.
In July 2009 about 200 people were killed in riots between Uighurs and the majority Han Chinese in Urumqi. Last October two tourists were killed and more than three dozen injured when a car with three Uighurs inside plowed through a sidewalk and ignited near Mao’s portrait at Tiananmen Gate in Beijing. The occupants of the car were killed and five Uighurs described as Islamic separatists were arrested.
The ethnic tensions were the focus of Mr. Xi’s four-day visit to the region, his first to Xinjiang since taking over as the country’s top leader in November 2012. Mr. Xi visited police units in Urumqi as well as in the ancient Silk Road city of Kashgar, telling them to intensify efforts to combat separatists and quell violence.
“The training must simulate real combat. Sweat more in peacetime to bleed less in wartime,” Xinhua quoted Mr. Xi as telling the police in Kasghar. “The Kashgar region is the front line in antiterrorist efforts and maintaining social stability, the situation is grim and complicated. Grass-roots police stations are ‘fists and daggers.’ So you must spare no efforts in serving the people and safeguarding public security.”
Chen Jieren, a Beijing-based political analyst who tracks developments in Xinjiang, said there was no question that the blast had been meant as a message to Mr. Xi. “I believe that after the attackers learned that Xi was in Xinjiang they would definitely create an incident at any cost in order to prove their existence and capability,” he said.
Mr. Chen said the incident would only serve to embolden authorities and “strengthen their determination to crack down.”
An exhaustive 20-minute account of Mr. Xi’s visit dominated the 11 p.m. news in China. Mr. Xi was seen meeting with ethnic Uighurs in one scene, and talking to officers of the People’s Armed Police in another.
The television report made no mention of the blast, which had taken place almost four hours earlier, and it was only after it ended that China Central Television broadcast news of the incident on its Weibo account. Posts about the incident were removed from several domestic news sites.