DUBAI - An Islamist group calling itself the Turkestan Islamic Party
said a deadly car crash in Beijing's Tiananmen Square on Oct. 28 was a
"jihadi operation" by its mujahideen, or holy warriors, the SITE
monitoring service said.
The service, which tracks Islamist
militant statements, said the party had released a Uighur language audio
speech from its leader Abdullah Mansour in which he said such
operations were only the beginning of attacks on Chinese authorities.
In
the attack, a vehicle ploughed through bystanders on the edge of the
capital's Tiananmen Square and burst into flames, killing the three
people in the car and two bystanders including a Filipina tourist.
In
an eight-minute message, Mansour said Uighur fighters would target even
the Great Hall of the People, where the Chinese parliament meets and
China's Communist Party holds legislative and ceremonial activities,
SITE said.
The service quoted Mansour as saying: "O Chinese
unbelievers, know that you have been fooling East Turkestan for the last
60 years, but now they have awakened. The people have learned who is
the real enemy and they returned to their own religion. They learned the
lesson."
Chinese authorities have blamed what they called the
East Turkestan Islamic Movement, a Muslim Uighur separatist group, for
the attack, and arrested five people they said were radical Islamists
planning a holy war.
It was not immediately clear if that group
is connected to the one purportedly led by Mansour. Security has since
been strengthened in both Beijing and in Xinjiang, the restive far
western region the Uighurs call home. — Reuters
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