Beijing authorities have said the car crash on the edge of Tiananmen Square on Monday was a “terrorist attack” and have detained five suspects in connection with the incident.
Five people died, including three in the car, after it ploughed into a tourist crowd and crashed and burst into flames at the entrance to the Forbidden City on Monday. Almost 40 people were injured, some seriously.
Police on Wednesday said the vehicle carried a container of gasoline, two knives, an iron bar and a flag with “extremist religious content”. The statement said the occupants, who burnt to death, were a woman, her son and his wife. The statement did not say where they were from, but the names given are Uighur, a Turkic people native to the restive Xinjiang region on the Chinese border with Central Asia.