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Strategies & Market Trends : Asia Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DMaA who wrote (2140)	2/14/1998 10:48:00 AM
From: Bucky Katt	Respond to of 9980

DA-->>Bus explosion kills at least 30 people in China 10.39 a.m. ET (1540 GMT) February 14, 1998 HONG KONG - A bus exploded in the central Chinese city of Wuhan today, killing 16 people and injuring 30 others, a Chinese news agency reported. But a Hong Kong-based dissident group quoted an unidentified source in Wuhan as saying at least 30 people were killed in the explosion, which it said was believed to have been caused by a bomb. The China News Service, monitored in Hong Kong, said the explosion occurred when the bus was approaching a bridge in the city in Hubei province. The Information Center of Human Rights and Democratic Movement in China said Wuhan residents believed the bomb was planted either by disgruntled employees laid off from money-losing state enterprises or by Uighur separatists from the western Muslim region of Xinjiang. "The bus was burnt down to the frame. Bodies were everywhere,'' the center said. "Body parts could be found 40 metres (130 feet) from the blast.'' Police sealed off the Yangtze bridge for four hours, it said. The center said the bomb was supposed to go off when the bus was at the center of the bridge but the timing may have been miscalculated. The group quoted an unidentified source in Wuhan as saying the electric-powered bus was believed to be carrying more than 40 people at the time of the blast and that five survived the attack. The explosion which rocked the industrial city at around 10 a.m. (0200 GMT) damaged five other vehicles nearby, the center said in a statement faxed to news organizations in Beijing. Several explosions rocked China last year. Last February, nine people were killed and 74 injured when three bus bombings rocked Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang. Beijing authorities are still investigating a bomb blast that injured 10 people on a bus in a busy shopping district last March. Chinese sources say hotels, airports and stations in Beijing and Xinjiang have been on alert against possible bomb attacks by Muslim separatists. Xinjiang is home to the Uighur ethnic minority. Uighur militants want to create an independent state of "East Turkestan'' in Xinjiang, which borders Afghanistan, Pakistan and three mostly Muslim Central Asian states. A notice was issued by the Ministry of Public Security last month calling for heightened vigilance in the capital and in Xinjiang, according to the sources. The alert is to remain in force in the run-up to the annual session of parliament that starts on March 5. Last month, a Chinese farmer who had lost a leg in a train accident killed himself and three others in a bomb attack on the Ministry of Railways in Beijing. Five others were injured in the attack.