At least 29 people were killed Saturday after assailants wielding knives stormed a train station in southwestern China, in what has been described as "an organized, premeditated violent terrorist attack."
From the
Associated Press via ABC News:
More than 10 assailants slashed scores of people with knives at a train station in southern China in what state media said Sunday was a terrorist assault by ethnic separatists from the far west. Twenty-nine slash victims and four attackers were killed and 143 people wounded.
Police fatally shot four of the assailants, captured one and were searching for the others following the attack late Saturday at the Kunming train station in Yunnan province, the official Xinhua News Agency said. State broadcaster CCTV said two of the attackers were women — one of the slain and the one who was captured and later brought to a hospital for treatment.
Witnesses described assailants dressed in black storming the train station and slashing people indiscriminately with large knives and machetes.
Student Qiao Yunao, 16, was waiting to catch a train at the station when people starting crying out and running, and then saw a man cut another man's neck, drawing blood.
"I was freaking out, and ran to a fast food store, and many people were running in there to take refuge," she told The Associated Press via Sina Weibo, a Chinese microblog. "I saw two attackers, both men, one with a watermelon knife and the other with a fruit knife. They were running and chopping whoever they could."
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It was an organized, premeditated violent terrorist attack, according to the authorities," reported China's official Xinhua news agency. The identities of the attackers reportedly killed had not yet been confirmed.
Additional reports described the scene at the time of the attack, based on witness accounts.