(Vatican Radio) : In southern China, around 30 people are dead and 130 injured after
assailants attacked them with knives. The attack took place at a railway station.
Around ten assailants drew knives and slashed passersby at a railway station in the
city of Kunming.
Witnesses said the attackers appeared to be armed with fruit
knives and were lunging at everyone nearby. People fled and sheltered in shops nearby,
while fire trucks reportedly became makeshift ambulances to take survivors to hospital.
Police
said they shot dead four attackers and arrested another.
The attackers' identity
was unclear, but local authorities called it a premeditated terrorist attack by separatists
from China's far West, where there have been deadly clashes between ethnic Uighurs
and police.
It is the first time Chinese authorities have accused those separatists
of mounting an attack of this kind so far from their home province.
But in
November last year, authorities blamed separatists from Xinjiang in an apparent suicide
attack that killed five people in central Beijing.
China's president called
for "all-out efforts" to find those responsible and bring them to justice. Security
officials said police would show zero tolerance in solving the case. Listen to Alastair
Wanklyn's report