China today blamed Islamic militants from the volatile Xinjiang province for an unprecedented mass knife attack by "terrorists" at a railway station in Kunming city that left at least 33 people dead and over 130 injured.
A group of knife and sword-wielding attackers, dressed in black, burst into the station in Kunming, the tranquil capital of south-west China's Yunnan province last night and began stabbing and slashing people at random.
Images from the scene posted online showed bodies lying in pools of blood at the railway station.
"It was an organised, premeditated violent terrorist attack," state-run Xinhua news agency reported, adding that police shot at least four suspects dead. Over 10 "terrorist suspects" were involved in the attack and police are hunting for the rest, it said.
A female suspect was arrested and is being treated in hospital for unspecified injuries while a search continues for others who fled the scene, another report said.
Evidence at the crime scene showed that the attack was orchestrated by Xinjiang separatist forces, the municipal government of Kunming said today.
TV footage showed police recovering swords carried by some of the members of the group.
It is the first time militants from the banned East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) from Xinjiang have been blamed for carrying out such a large-scale attack so far from their remote homeland. It follows an incident in Beijing's iconic Tiananmen Square in October which shook the country's Communist leadership, forcing them to establish a state committee to ensure national security.
ETIM is fighting for the independence of Muslim Uygur majority Xinjiang province, which is endowed with natural resources, including oil.
Last year three members of a family including two men tried to carry out an attack at the Forbidden city near the Tiananmen square here. Four people were killed in that attack.
Xinjiang, which borders Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (POK) and Afghanistan, witnessed several violent attacks by the militants stated to be from ETIM, an al-Qaeda linked group fighting for independent Xinjiang.
For several years the province experienced ethnic unrest between native Muslim Uygurs and the Han national from the Chinese mainland for the past few years over the increasing settlements of Hans in the region.
The authorities vowed to crack down on violent terrorist activities in all forms and guarantee the safety of people's lives and property, Xinhua said.
Chinese President Xi Jinping has asked authorities to probe the case with all-out efforts and punish the terrorists in accordance with the law.
