On Tuesday morning, a suicide bomber rammed a vehicle through the gates of the Chinese embassy in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan.
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Hua said China strongly condemned the terrorist attack and said terrorism was “a public enemy of the worldwide community”, as well as the most serious threat in the region.
“China’s Foreign Ministry immediately activated its emergency response plan, and has requested that the Kyrgyz side immediately implement whatever measures it can to ensure the safety of Chinese institutions and citizens in Kyrgyzstan and quickly investigate into the truth behind this incident and severely punish those responsible”. Police cordoned off the embassy and adjacent area, and the GKNB state security service were investigating the bombing that occurred at about 10:00 a.m. (0400 GMT).
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and his Kyrgyz counterpart, Erlan Abdyldaev, on August 30 discussed in a phone conversation the terrorist attack against the Chinese Embassy to Kyrgyzstan and pledged closer cooperation in the fight against terrorism.
During a visit in 2013, President Xi Jinping (習近平) said that China and Kyrgyzstan would work together to combat “three evil forces” – a reference to terrorism, extremism and separatism in Xinjiang.
In Beijing, a spokeswoman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry confirmed that three members of its embassy’s staff had been wounded.
The U.S. State Department said the blast appeared to have been caused by an improvised explosive device in a vehicle. Embassy personnel were escorted off the compound shortly after the attack, which came just one day before the central Asian nation’s independence day.
Authorities in Kyrgyzstan, a mostly Muslim former Soviet republic of 6 million people, routinely detain suspected militants they accuse of being linked to Islamic State, which actively recruits in Central Asia. According to preliminary data, he was a Uighur, a Turkic ethnic group, living in Eastern and Central Asia, the local news website K-News reported.
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.
China is the largest economic player in the region, and has heavily invested in infrastructure to promote its “One Belt, One Road” project, a 21st century version of the Chinese Silk Road that’s meant to connect China to Europe through its Central Asian neighbors.
In 2014, border guards in Kyrgyzstan killed 11 people believed to be from a Uighur militant group that had illegally crossed China’s border.
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Police said an investigative team is working on the scene to identify the attacker.
