Three people were killed and dozens injured in what state media say was a terrorist attack involving knives and explosives at a railway station in the capital of western China’s Xinjiang region on Wednesday, hours after President Xi Jinping used a rare tour there to demonstrate his government’s commitment to combating terrorism.
By James T. Areddy and Josh Chin
Updated April 30, 2014 4:01 p.m. ET
SHANGHAI—Three people were killed and dozens injured in what state media say was a terrorist attack involving knives and explosives at a railway station in the capital of western China’s Xinjiang region on Wednesday, hours after President Xi Jinping used a rare tour there to demonstrate his government’s commitment to combating terrorism.
Assailants attacked people with knives at the station exit, according to a report on the Xinjiang government news portal. Explosives were detonated at the same time, the report said, injuring at least 79 people.
The blast occurred just after 7 p.m. local time, according to the Xinhua news agency and other state media. One photo distributed by state media showed a street littered with debris and abandoned suitcases.
A man answering the phone in the public security bureau office at the southern train station, the region’s largest, in the city of Urumqi confirmed the explosion. “Yes, a blast happened not long ago, but we are busy arranging rescue efforts so I can’t say any more now,” the man said before hanging up.
State media, which issued only brief dispatches about the blast, didn’t identify the source but Xinhua said it was powerful and appeared to originate around suitcases left near the station exit. A spokeswoman for the Xinjiang government couldn’t be reached to comment.
Xinjiang has seen widespread ethnic violence in recent years between some members of the Turkic-speaking, mainly Muslim group called Uighurs and the China’s dominant Han ethnic group, which largely controls the government and police.
Information flow out of Xinjiang is often limited. In Wednesday evening’s broadcast, state broadcaster China Central Television reported the president’s four-day visit there only when it was over—and around the time the blast occurred.
Mr. Xi’s visit to Xinjiang—his first there since becoming China’s leader and its military chief in late 2012—followed recent acts of violence outside Xinjiang that the government has blamed on the region’s separatists. Those included a stabbing spree two months ago that left over 30 dead at a train station in the southern city Kunming and a jeep’s explosion in October on a sidewalk adjacent to Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.
Mr. Xi denounced the attack and urged security forces to find the perpetrators, Xinhua reported.
While in Xinjiang, Mr. Xi visited army bases and special forces with orders to “strike first” at terrorists. Early Wednesday he was at a hotel some10 kilometers (about 6 miles) from the Urumqi railway station to honor local workers but is thought to have left the city by the afternoon.
If authorities determine Wednesday’s explosion was a bomb, the timing and location would suggest an ability to strike for maximum impact: In addition to Mr. Xi’s visit, Wednesday marked the eve of a long May Day holiday weekend that in Urumqi was to include a ceremony to mark the opening of a new intra-province rail system.
“If you can conduct attacks at symbolically important times you are choosing your own targets,” said Philip B.K. Potter, an expert on terrorism at the University of Michigan. “That shows capacity.”
On his tour, Mr. Xi visited a frontier base in the Silk Road city of Kashgar near the border with Pakistan and reviewed antiterrorist drills. Mr. Xi was quoted in state media as saying police should have the means to counter terrorists, a reference to recent plans in several Chinese cities to arm more officers with guns.
Xinjiang is already one of the most locked-down places in China. If Wednesday’s blast was deliberate, “It will be seen as a failure of the security services,” said Andrew Small, a fellow with the Asia program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, a think tank in Washington. In Kashgar, Mr. Xi visited a primary school where he encouraged Han teachers to learn the Uighur language and said ethnic minority children shouldn’t neglect Chinese, the nation’s mother tongue, in hopes of promoting national unity.
The language used by Mr. Xi echoed statements by past leaders who have failed to address deeper problems in society, said Alim Seytoff, a spokesman for an exile group, the World Uyghur Congress. He added, “even Mao Zedong had pictures taken with Uighur farmers.”
—Yang Jie
contributed to this article.
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