A mass stabbing at a Chinese train station has left 28 people dead and 113 injured in a 'violent terrorist attack', state media says.Victims described knife-wielding attackers dressed in black bursting into Kunming railway station and slashing indiscriminately.
Beijing's top security official was reported to be heading to the scene.The incident, which happened at around 9pm on Saturday (local time), 'was an organised, premeditated violent terrorist attack' carried out by 'unidentified knife-wielding people', the official news agency Xinhua said, citing authorities.
Police shot dead five of the attackers at the train station in southwestern Yunnan province, Xinhua reported, and are 'chasing the rest'.A knife victim named Yang Haifei, who was wounded in the chest and back, told Xinhua that he had been buying a train ticket when the attackers approached and had tried to escape with the crowd.
'I saw a person come straight at me with a long knife and I ran away with everyone,' he said, while others 'simply fell on the ground'.Some who had escaped were desperately looking for missing loved ones.'I can't find my husband, and his phone went unanswered,' Yang Ziqing was quoted by Xinhua as saying.
She said she had been waiting for her train to Shanghai 'when a knife-wielding man suddenly came at them'.
Knife and bomb attacks against local officials occur sporadically in China's far-western region of Xinjiang, where the mainly Muslim Uighur ethnic minority complain of cultural repression and tight security, while Beijing says it is facing a violent separatist movement.
Incidents involving Uighurs are often labelled 'terrorist attacks' while others carried out by Chinese seen as having grievances against society or the authorities are not.
