Jonathan Kaiman
The Guardian
April 30, 2014
Explosion in regional capital, Urumqi, also leaves 79 wounded after president finishes four-day tour of area .
Three people were killed and 79 wounded in a bomb attack at a railway station in the far-west region of Xinjiang after the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, finished a four-day tour of the region vowing to step up anti-terrorism efforts.
The official Xinhua news agency said four of the people had been seriously injured in the blast in Urumqi on Wednesday evening.
Xinjiang is home to a Muslim Uighur minority population and is at the centre of a low-intensity insurgency against the rule of the majority Han Chinese.
According to Beijing News, the victims have been taken to the city’s Autonomous Region Hospital of Chinese Medicine in Urumqi. The hospital and police station could not immediately be reached for comment.
Searches for “Urumqi explosion” have been blocked on Sina Weibo, the country’s most popular microblog.
Xi had finished a four-day trip to Xinjiang hours before the blast,according to state media.
He has mentioned anti-terrorism in public remarks 15 times in recent months, the Communist party mouthpiece People’s Daily reported, signalling state security has become one of the governments chief concerns.
Authorities must “make terrorists like rats scurrying across a street, with everybody shouting ‘beat them!’,” Xinhua quoted Xi as saying ahead of the trip.
During Xi’s visit state media showed him chatting with locals and smiling with Uighur schoolchildren, but also watching a military exercise and inspecting security officials. “You must have the most effective means to deal with violent terrorists,” he told police officers in Kashgar, a city in the region’s far west that is frequently beset by ethnic violence.
He called Kashgar “the front line in anti-terrorism,” Xinhua reported.
Beijing accuses the separatists of inciting animosity, while government critics say restrictive and discriminatory policies have alienated the Uighurs.
In March five people armed with knives and believed to be Uighurs attacked crowds at a railway station in south-west China, killing 29 people.
