The deliberate attack of a crowd in the Chinese city of Zhuhai It has left 35 dead and 43 seriously injured. The events occurred on Monday night. but they did not come to light until this Tuesday through a statement from the Municipal Public Security Office, after the authorities acted at full speed and eliminated the materials shared on social networks.
At 7:48 p.m. (12:48 p.m. Spanish peninsular time), an all-terrain vehicle broke into the pedestrian area next to a stadium and rammed into the crowd gathered there to play sports. The person responsible, a 62-year-old man named Faninjured himself in the neck with a knife in an apparent suicide attempt.
Since then, he has remained in a coma, which is why he has not yet been interrogated, and is receiving medical treatment in a hospital under police custody. The authorities’ preliminary investigation indicates that The attacker would be going through a divorce process and his discontent with the imposed division of assets would have motivated his assault.
Images of what happened took over Chinese social networks but the censors acted immediately, suppressing the materials. Initial reports from local media, with interviews with eyewitnesses, were also deleted. Videos leaked to international platforms, however, show the car evading at full speed, leaving behind twenty corpses lying motionless in unnatural positions on the floor of the athletics track, surrounded by people crying and providing first aid. Many of the victims wear sports uniforms and some carry flags, as they would be part of a military marching group.
The harshness of what happened has led to the intervention of Xi Jinpingwho has described the attack as “extremely ruthless” and has ordered an all-out effort to treat the wounded as well as “a severe punishment for the person responsible according to the law”. The Chinese leader has also called for “strengthening risk prevention and control and promptly resolving conflicts and disputes,” in statements reported by state television CCTV.
The response was immediate, with hundreds of attendees dispatched to the scene to provide emergency care. More than three hundred paramedics have worked throughout the night to save the seriously injured, and at this moment there is no longer any fear for the lives of any of them. The central government has also dispatched its own troops to supervise first-hand the operation organized by local authorities.
The displays of mourning in Zhuhai were public since the morning. Pedestrians have decorated the area with flowers and candles in memory of the victims. A large number of people have flocked to hospitals to donate blood. The incident coincided with the air show that the Popular Liberation Army celebrates every year around this time in the city, where it is showing off its new drones and fighters invisible to radar.
China is a country with a low crime ratevery limited access to weapons and a large video surveillance network. In recent months, however, several consecutive attacks have taken place. At the end of September, a man stabbed a Japanese schoolboy to death outside a school in Shenzhen. In June, another attacker broke into a school bus in Suzhouinjuring a mother and her son and ending the life of a woman who tried to restrain him. Two weeks earlier, four American university professors were attacked in a park. Jilin. For this reason, Prime Minister Li Qiang also spoke out on the matter this Tuesday, urging local authorities to “investigate hidden risks and social conflicts.”
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