[Myanmar] Crash at Beijing’s Forbidden City Kills Five

[News_Editor]

Vehicles travel along Chang’an Avenue as smoke raises in front of a portrait of late Chinese Chairman Mao Zedong at Tiananmen Square in Beijing October 28, 2013. (Photo: Reuters)

BEIJING — A vehicle plowed through a crowd in front of Beijing’s Forbidden City and caught fire in a crash that killed five people and injured visitors and security officers at one of China’s most politically sensitive and heavily guarded public spaces.

No information was released about a possible cause of the seemingly deliberate crash, and authorities quickly erected screens to hide the aftermath and clean up the scene, while images of the crash were removed from the Internet.

Police were investigating and taking “effective measures to ensure the capital’s safety and stability,†according to a statement on the Beijing police’s microblog.

Those killed in Monday’s crash were the vehicle’s three occupants and two visitors. The 38 injured were among the crowds in front of Tiananmen Gate, where a large portrait of Mao Zedong hangs near the southern entrance to the former imperial palace.

A woman from the Philippines was killed, according to Beijing police and a Philippine official. Police said the other visitor killed was a Chinese man and three other Filipinos and a Japanese man were among the injured, but no details about their conditions were released.

The police statement said the driver veered inside of a barrier separating a crowded sidewalk from busy Chang’an Avenue and then drove along the walkway to Tiananmen Gate, which stands across the avenue from the sprawling Tiananmen Square.

The vehicle burst into flames after crashing into a guardrail for one of the ancient stone bridges leading to the gate, police said.

Chang’an Avenue was closed as police and rescue services converged, but police said traffic was restored just over an hour later.

Any incident in the area is sensitive because the square was the focus of a 1989 pro-democracy movement that was violently suppressed by the military. The square is still heavily policed to guard against political protests, which occasionally happen on sensitive dates.

The incident had every appearance of being deliberate, since the driver apparently jumped a curb and traveled about 400 meters (yards) to the spot where the car was said to have caught fire while avoiding trees, street lights and at least one security checkpoint.

Police did not immediately release any information about who was inside the car or how they died.

Photos of the scene that briefly circulated on the Internet showed a vehicle emitting thick smoke at the gate. Injured people, including a young girl, lay on the ground, many of them bleeding heavily.

Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs spokesman Raul Hernandez said their information indicated that the woman who died and the injured Filipinos—two women and a man—were tourists. “Our embassy is working to gather more details about this incident and to extend the necessary and appropriate assistance to the victims,†he said in a statement.

Police said the other tourist killed was a man from the southern province of Guangdong.

Attendants and nearby concession stand vendors who were asked about the incident all said they were not clear on what happened. Such employees are generally understood to be part-time police informants.

Just west of the square lies the Great Hall of the People, the seat of China’s Parliament, while many of China’s top leaders live and work just a few hundred meters (yards) away in the tightly guarded Zhongnanhai compound.

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Source: Irrawaddy.org