 Bus blasts rock Kunming, kill 2
By Liu Zhen (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-07-22 07:39
KUNMING: Two persons were killed and 14 injured when explosions ripped through two buses an hour apart on a busy Kunming street in Yunnan province yesterday morning. The first blast went off at 7:05 am on a bus on route No 54, killing one passenger and injuring 10. The second occurred at 8:10 am on the same road and on a bus of the same route in the heart of Kunming. The blasts came two and half months after three people were killed in a similar explosion on a bus in Shanghai. Police said the people behind yesterday's blasts had used ammonium nitrate, which is generally used by the military.
Most of the injured suffered damage to their ears because of the loud explosions. And the injuries suffered by them were not life threatening, except those sustained by a woman, who has been admitted to the ICU of a hospital. The blasts spread panic in the city. A bus on route 77 was stopped and passengers asked to evacuate after an unidentified bag was found on it around 3 pm. Later, it turned out that a migrant worker had forgotten to carry it when he got down from the bus. People avoided taking buses, and in many parts of the city taxi drivers did brisk business. Security has been beefed up in the entire province, especially Kunming. Security checks at airports, highways and entry and exit points have been intensified, and police have set up special checkpoints at many places. Police have identified yesterday's victims as Wang Dezhi, 30, a woman from Chuxiong, 200km from Kunming, and Chen Shifei, 26, a man from the Lijiang Educational Science College in Dayan Town. Police cordoned off the area where the first blast occurred. It was littered with glass splinters from the damaged bus. A passenger on the first bus told reporters the explosion occurred just after a short man got off the bus leaving behind a black plastic bag. A witness recalled hearing a deafening noise followed by thick black smoke rising from the smoldered bus, which had been removed by 9 am. "I fainted for a few seconds because of the noise," the witness said. "Quite a few of the injured, blood oozing from their wounds, were pulled out of the bus after ambulances reached in about 10 minutes." Wang Dezhi was traveling with her fianc to a bus depot, from where they had planned to travel back to Chuxiong to celebrate her daughter's fifth birthday. Her fianc Han Xianming was injured in the left arm. Tingting was to have celebrated her birthday with her mother. Instead she had to travel all the way from Chuxiong to Kunming with her maternal grandfather, Wang Weizi, to claim her body. They reached the hospital around 3:30 pm. "They (Wang Dezhi and Han Xianming) were scheduled to get married after Spring Festival next year," Wang Weizi told reporters. Next to him, little Tingting stood silently. Zhang Haizhou and Wu Jiachun contributed to the story (China Daily 07/22/2008 page1) |
