Five people were killed today when a car veered off the road and plowed through Tiananmen Square in Beijing.
The car crashed almost directly in front of the main entrance of the Forbidden City.
AN explosion was heard before the car caught fire in the square.
Reuters reported:
Five people were killed and dozens injured on Monday, the government said, when a car ploughed into pedestrians and caught fire in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, the site of 1989 pro-democracy protests bloodily suppressed by the military.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying, asked whether the government believed the incident was a terror attack, said she did not know the specifics of the case and declined further comment.
Police said on their official microblog that the car veered off the road at the north of the square, a major tourist attraction, crossed the barriers and caught fire.
The three people in the car died, they said.
The Beijing city government said on one of its official news websites that a female tourist from the Philippines and a male tourist from southern Guangdong province had also died.
Of the 38 injured, three were tourists from the Philippines and one from Japan, it added.
The central and Beijing governments held a meeting after the incident to speedily investigate what happened and “ensure the security and stability of the capital”, it said.
The car crashed almost directly in front of the main entrance of the Forbidden City, where there hangs a huge portrait of the founder of Communist China, Mao Zedong.
