Women injured in Carrefour outlet attack out of danger

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-11-30 20:55

KUNMING -- The three women severely injured in a southwest China Carrefour outlet attack had been out of danger after operations, police said on Sunday.

The three, including two customers, 33-year-old Xie Guomei and 22-year-old Xie Peiling, and one saleswoman, 22-year-old Wang Lihua, were knifed by a 39-year-old man named Lu Zhiwen in Kunming, capital of Yunnan Province.

Xie Peiling, the most seriously injured, was hacked in the chest. Her lung and liver were stabbed. She had been sent to intensive care unit, a doctor of the provincial hospital said.

Xie Guomei was hurt in the left shoulder and Wang Lihua in the neck and back, the doctor said.

After timely operations, all the three had been pulled out of life danger but not stable enough, the doctor said.

Another woman named Zhu Yidan, a female nurse of the local medical emergency center, was also hurt but not seriously. When she entered the store to treat the injured, she was taken as a hostage by Lu Zhiwen, police said.

Lu was shot dead at about 1:30 p.m., four hours after he injured three and took a hostage in the Carrefour store on Longquan Road in the northern suburbs of Kunming, as police had to shoot and kill him to ensure the hostage safety, police said.

The man, believed to have been disappointed in a love affair, threatened to kill the hostage if his girl friend doesn't come to the store to see him, police said.

He had been jailed for three and a half years for attempted murder in 2003 and detained for holding his girlfriend surnamed Lei under duress on October 21 in a rented apartment, police said.

Carrefour has opened four stores in Kunming since 2002. The Longquan store opened on September 8, 2006 as the fourth outlet in the city.

Since entering the Chinese market in 1995, Carrefour has opened 118 stores on the Chinese mainland, employing almost 50,000 people.