URUMQI, China (AFP) ― Jittery traders Friday set up their stalls near the scene of a market attack in the Muslim Uighur homeland of Xinjiang, after China’s leader vowed to smash the “terrorists” responsible for the deaths of 31 people.
Washington condemned the “horrific terrorist attack” and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said “there is no justification for the killing of civilians.”
Assailants in two vehicles ploughed into shoppers and traders and threw explosives at a street market in Urumqi, the capital of the volatile region, on Thursday.
The devastating attack was described by authorities as the latest “severe terrorist incident” to hit the far western region, home to China’s mainly Muslim Uighur minority.
President Xi Jinping pledged to “severely punish violent terrorists,” and “crack down on them with a heavy fist.”
More than 90 people were also wounded when the two off-road vehicles drove into the crowd, with one of them exploding, an incident with echoes of a fiery car crash in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square last year.
One local shopkeeper, who refused to be named, told AFP she saw desperate shoppers fleeing from the vehicles.
“They ran onto the pavement, but many couldn’t get away,” she said.
“The terrorists were trying to kill as many as they could, and they came here because they knew it would be crowded.”
Police erected a knee-high barrier at the end of the road early Friday, and elderly shoppers were restricted to patronizing the supermarkets that line the street, rather than buying produce sold by the market traders who had previously set up stalls on the pavement.
The barrier was later taken down and traffic allowed through.
