One Killed in China's Shanxi Province Blast

Updated Nov. 6, 2013 2:49 a.m. ETBEIJING—Several explosions that authorities believe were caused by homemade bombs left at least one person dead and eight others injured outside a provincial headquarters for the Communist Party in northern China on Wednesday.
The explosions took place in front of the Shanxi Province party committee building in the provincial capital of Taiyuan at around 7:40 a.m., according to a message on the city police department’s verified feed on the Sina Weibo microblog service. An employee on his way to work in the building said he heard several explosions; state media said eight explosions were heard.

Photos: Blasts Rock Taiyuan

The force shattered windows and hurled debris that flattened tires in cars 100 meters away, said a report posted online by state China Central Television. In addition to the one person killed, a report on the Shanxi provincial news website said another person was seriously injured while the other seven received light injuries.

The accident site is shown Wednesday after explosions in Taiyuan, the capital of north China’s Shanxi province. Zuma Press

The official Xinhua News Agency reported that authorities found steel balls and circuit boards scattered around the scene of the explosions, leading police to believe that improvised explosive devices were used.
Multiple photos posted to Sina Weibo showed marble-sized ball bearings, nails and other debris purportedly collected at the scene.
Authorities haven’t yet said who might be behind the attack in Taiyuan, which is 500 kilometers, or about 300 miles, southwest of Beijing.
The explosions come just days before Communist Party leaders are scheduled to convene for a major policy meeting in Beijing. It also comes amid tightened Chinese security after a car last week slammed into the front of the Forbidden City and burst into flames, killing three inside and two tourists. Chinese authorities have labeled that episode a terrorist attack, with one top security official blaming a terrorist group that has been waging a violent separatist campaign in the restive far-western Xinjiang region.
In a country where guns are difficult to come by, people with grievances often resort to homemade bombs and other improvised devices to exact revenge on government agencies and other institutions.
In May 2011, 49 people were injured after a fire tore through a rural bank office in the northwest province of Gansu province in what the government later described as a case of arson perpetrated by a former employee of the bank who had been fired for embezzlement. Two weeks later, a series of blasts at a prosecutor’s office and two government buildings killed three and injured nine others in the city of Fuzhou, in southern Jiangxi province. Authorities identified the culprit, who died in one of the explosions, as a man angry over property seizure.
Photos posted online suggest the Communist Party building in Taiyuan was not damaged as a result of the explosions.
—Kersten Zhang contributed to this article.
Write to Josh Chin at josh.chin@wsj.com

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