Terror group ETIM behind Beijing blast
Print Edition
All the eight suspects in Monday’s terrorist attack at Beijing’s Tian’anmen Square were from the northwestern Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Chinese police said yesterday as they released more details on the attack.
China has linked the attack to a terrorist Islamic movement.
Three of the suspects died as their car went up in flames in Beijing’s popular tourist area.
The eight suspects, from Xinjiang’s Hotan area, prepared 400 liters of gas, arranged for dozens of daggers, a Benz sports utility car and 40,000 yuan (US$6,558) in cash, China Central Television reported yesterday, citing police sources.
The suspects surveyed the site three times before launching the attack in front of the Tian’anmen Rostrum around midday on Monday, the CCTV report said. They had stayed in Beijing’s Xicheng District.
China’s top security official has named a terrorist Islamic movement as behind-the-scenes supporters of the fatal attack.
“Behind the instigation is the terrorist group East Turkestan Islamic Movement entrenched in central and west Asian regions,” Meng Jianzhu, chief of the Commission for Political and Legal Affairs of the Party, said in an interview with the Hong Kong-based Phoenix TV during a visit to Tashkent, capital of Uzbekistan for a regional security meeting.
The car crash killed two tourists, one from the Philippines and the other from China’s southern Guangdong Province, and injured dozens.
The three people in the car — a man, his wife and his mother — all died in the crash.
Earlier this week, police said the vehicle had a Xinjiang licence plate.
Police also found flags imprinted with religious slogans among items in the SUV used in the attack and at the temporary lodgings of five arrested suspects.
Yesterday, additional vehicle barriers were in place along the route the SUV took as it ploughed through the crowds toward Tian’anmen Rostrum.
Police conducted random bag and ID checks among the tourists at the site.
Foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying yesterday called the ETIM “the most immediate and realistic security threat in China.”
It and other terrorist organizations “have long been engaged in Central, East and West Asia, and have colluded with other international terrorist organizations,” she said.
“The terrorist attack in Tian’anmen Square shows that terrorist forces were plotting in all sorts of ways to undermine development of Shanghai Cooperation Organization member countries,” Hua said.
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