Chinese officials have blamed separatists from the north-western Xinjiang region for a mass knife attack at a railway station that left 29 people dead and at least 130 wounded.
A Chinese police investigator inspects the scene of the attack. Photo: AFP
A group of attackers, dressed in black, burst into the station in the south-west city of Kunming and began stabbing people at random.
Images from the scene posted online showed bodies lying in pools of blood.
State news agency Xinhua said police shot at least four suspects dead.
The BBC reports a female suspect was arrested and is being treated in hospital for unspecified injuries while a search continues for others who fled the scene.
Authorities described the incident as an "organised, premeditated, violent terrorist attack".
The Kunming city government later said that evidence from the scene pointed to separatists from Xinjiang as being behind the attack. It gave no details and the claim could not be verified.
Some of Xinjiang's minority Uighur Muslims want autonomy from Chinese rule and an end to state suppression of their religion.
Witnesses said that the men, who were mostly dressed in black, attacked people at random.
A survivor named Yang Haifei, who was wounded in the back and chest, told Xinhua he had been buying a train ticket when the attackers rushed into the station.
"I saw a person come straight at me with a long knife and I ran away with everyone," he said.
He added that those too slow to flee were cut down.
Some who escaped were desperately looking for missing loved ones.
Yang Ziqing told Xinhua she and her husband had been waiting for a train to Shanghai "when a knife-wielding man suddenly came at them".
"I can't find my husband, and his phone went unanswered," she said.
