China's top security official Meng Jianzhu visits the wounded in Kunming Hospital in southwest China after a brutal attack by knife-wielding assailants at a train station left some 33 people dead and dozens injured
There was a heavy security presence outside the Kunming train station in China on Sunday, a day after ten knife wielding assailants killed at least 29 victims and injured 143 people.
Police fatally shot four of the assailants, captured one and were searching for the others following the attack late on Saturday in Yunnan province.
State media described the incident as an extremist attack by ethnic separatists from the far west.
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.
The far western region of Xinjiang is home to a simmering rebellion against Chinese rule by some members of the Muslim Uighur population, and the government has responded with heavy-handed security.
Most attacks blamed on Uighur separatists take place in Xinjiang, where clashes between ethnic Uighurs and members of China's ethnic Han majority are frequent, but Saturday's assault happened more than 620 miles to the southeast in Yunnan, which has not had a history of such unrest.
However, a suicide car attack blamed on three ethnic Uighurs that killed five people including the attackers at Beijing's Tiananmen Gate last November raised alarms that militants could be changing tactics and aiming to strike at soft targets elsewhere in China.
The violence in Kunming came at a sensitive time as political leaders in Beijing prepared for Wednesday's opening of the annual legislature where the government of President Xi Jinping will deliver its first one-year work report.
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