Kunming Attack Condemned By U.N. As ‘Heinous Terrorist Attack’

The Kunming attack on Saturday night at a train station in the southwestern Chinese city which resulted in the death of at least 29 people ans saw 143 injured has been condemned by the United Nations Security Council.

The Security Council released the following statement on the massacre confirming that it was indeed an act of terror:

The members of the Security Council extended their deepest sympathy and condolence to the victims and their families suffered from such most heinous terrorist attack, as well as to the people and the government of the People’s Republic of China.

The New York Times described the Kunming attack vividly:

The group of about 10 attackers, dressed in black and wearing cloth masks, arrived in front of Kunming Railway Station in southwest China on Saturday night and began slashing at employees and commuters, sometimes repeatedly plunging their long knives and daggers into people too stunned or slow to flee.

By the time the police shot dead four assailants and ended the slaughter, the square and ticket sales hall at the station were strewn with bodies and moaning survivors in pools of blood.

The group which carried out the bloody knife attack, known as the Uighurs, are a Turkic-speaking, mainly Muslim group from the wester area of Xinjiang in China.

An opinion piece in the Chinese People’s Daily, the newspaper for the Chinese Communist Party, written by Wen Xian, accused the Western media of “soft-pedaling” the Kunming attack and not condemning it strongly enough.

Wen Xian wrote about the attack: “This violent attack shows the fundamentally anti-humane, anti-civilized, anti-social nature of the attackers. They are out-and-out terrorists.”

He continued to effectively name and shame specific news outlets who he claimed were too soft in their wording:

But some Western media, including CNN, The Associated Press, The New York Times and The Washington Post, were mystifying, confusing, even to the point of sowing discord. These media are always the loudest when it comes to anti-terrorism, but in the Kunming train station terrorist violence they lost their voice and spoke confusedly, making people angry.

Five of the perpetrators of the Kunming attack were shot by police at the train station, another five fled the scene. According to a report on Yahoo! Three suspects have been apprehended by authorities and at least two more suspects are still at large.