No-one has yet said they were behind the attack.
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France quickly condemned the attack and expressed solidarity with the staff of the Chinese embassy.
Law enforcement sources told reporters that a Mitsubishi Delica van smashed through a gate at the embassy yesterday morning before exploding in the center of the compound close to the ambassador’s residence.
Kyrgyz news website 24.kg reported that the vehicle appeared to have rammed the embassy’s gate before exploding.
Police cordoned off the building and the adjacent area, and the GKNB state security service said they were investigating the bombing that occurred around 10 a.m. local time (0400 GMT).
Chinese officials have previously been targeted in attacks linked to radicals from China’s mainly Muslim Uighur minority, which lives just across the border in the restive western Xinjiang province. The incident has been labelled a terrorist attack by the Kyrgyzstan government, with Deputy Prime Minister Zhenish Razakov issuing a statement that three were injured, going on to reveal that these individuals worked for the embassy and were subsequently hospitalized for their injuries.
In a press conference in Beijing, foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying condemned the “extreme violent act” and urged an investigation, but stopped short of labeling it an act of terrorism.
“We asked the Kyrgyz side to get to the bottom of this incident and hold whoever is behind this accountable”, spokesman Hua Chun- ying told journalists.
According to the residents, the explosion was so loud that it made their houses go shake and crashed their windows.
The government of Kyrgyzstan quickly condemned the “heinous terrorist attack” and launched an investigation into the identity of the suicide vehicle bomber.
The Kyrgyz emergency service retrieved the Chinese embassy employees and those of American embassy nearby. In 2002, unidentified gunmen shot and killed Wang Teng Ping, the Chinese embassy’s first secretary in Bishkek, and his driver.
Some security experts have questioned the Uighur group’s cohesiveness, however, and say China’s policies in Xinjiang, where hundreds have died in recent years in unrest blamed by Beijing on Islamist militants, have contributed to the unrest.
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BBC News makes reference to the 2014 border killings orchestrated by the Kyrgyzstan government, during which 11 people were killed after they crossed the border illegally from China.
