By David Kirton
Zhuhai: A driver rammed his car into a crowd at a sports centre in southern China, killing 35 people and severely injuring 43 in one of the deadliest attacks in contemporary Chinese history.
Chinese authorities took almost 24 hours to officially disclose the incident, which took place on Monday night in Zhuhai, a city of about 2.5 million people in southern China near Macau.
Images and videos showing dozens of people knocked to the ground and a car fleeing from the scene, which circulated on China’s major social media platforms on Monday night, were swiftly censored.
Angry comments about the official delay in reporting the incident were also removed, and the Weibo messaging site censored a hashtag that mentioned the death toll.
Police said the 62-year-old driver, with the surname Fan, had been captured and was hospitalised for wounds believed to have been self-inflicted. Fan had been upset about the split of assets in his divorce settlement, police added.
Candles and flowers were laid at the scene, on Tuesday evening. Around 30 people gathered around one of the sports centre’s gates and delivery bike riders stopped to add to around 20 bouquets laid in a row.
People look at barriers at the sports centre where a man deliberately rammed his car into people exercising.Credit: AP
Hundreds of rescue personnel from Zhuhai city and Guangdong province were deployed to provide emergency treatment. More than 300 healthcare workers from five hospitals worked around the clock to save lives, state media Beijing Daily reported.
The attack coincided with the People’s Liberation Army’s largest annual airshow in Zhuhai, where a new stealth jet fighter is on display for the first time.
“I was driving nearby last night and heard sirens everywhere – I thought it was for the airshow, but then I’ve never heard sirens so loud before,” said a taxi driver surnamed Guo.
“Then the passenger said there’d been a hit-and-run, I didn’t realise it was so bad.”
A woman lights a candle near flowers outside the Zhuhai People’s Fitness Plaza, where a man rammed his car into people exercising.Credit: AP
There was no indication that the attack was related to the airshow. But it was the second such incident to occur during the Zhuhai airshow: in 2008, at least four people were killed and 20 injured when a man drove a truck into a crowded schoolyard.
Police said that attacker had been seeking revenge over a traffic dispute.
Chinese state television CCTV said President Xi Jinping had ordered all-out efforts to treat the injured and demanded severe punishment for the perpetrator. The central government has dispatched a team to provide guidance on handling of the case, CCTV said.
BBC China correspondent Stephen McDonell was disrupted by an unidentified man who sought to stop the filming of a news report about the incident.
“Don’t you do that, I will also call the police”, McDonell told the man, on a televised segment posted on X.
Violent crime is rare in China due to tight security and strict gun laws. However, a rise in reports of knife attacks in large cities has drawn public attention to safety in public spaces.
The deadliest attack Reuters was able to identify in recent years in China took place in Urumqi, in China’s western Xinjiang region, in 2014, in which suicide bombers killed 39 people and four of the five attackers also died.
Reuters
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