China has said Monday’s car crash at Tiananmen Square was a terrorist attack that was “carefully planned” by a group from the Xinjiang region, adding that five people had been detained in connection with the incident.
Providing new details, Beijing police authorities said the vehicle contained gasoline, machetes, iron rods and “flags with extreme religious content”. The driver had set gasoline on fire after crashing the vehicle, to blow up the car in front of the Tiananmen gate, a crowded tourist attraction. Two tourists were killed and at least 40 injured.
Police authorities identified the driver as Usmen Hasan. His name suggests he is from the Uighur minority group — an ethnic Turkic Muslim group native to the westernXinjiang region. The police said the two other passengers were his mother Kuwanhan Reyim and his wife Gulkiz Gini. All three died, police officials said.
The government said five others had been “captured” on Wednesday. They were identified as Husanjan Wuxur, Gulnar Tuhtiniyaz, Yusup Umarniyaz, Bujanat Abdukadir and Yusup Ahmat — all Uighurs from Xinjiang.
The suspects had played a role in planning the attacks, the official Xinhua news agency reported, adding that “jihad flags and machetes were found in their temporary residences” in Beijing.