Police launch criminal probe after fatal blast at shopping mall in Chinese city of Changchun
- At least one person was killed after multiple explosions were reported in a basement car park and upper-storey office building
- Police have yet to give details of suspects or possible motives
At least one person has died and another was injured after an explosion at a shopping centre in northeast China on Friday.
Police in Changchun, the capital city of Jilin province, said they were treating the incident as a criminal case and have launched an investigation.
Changchun fire department received reports of explosions coming from a car parked in the basement of Wanda Plaza, a major shopping mall in downtown, just after 3pm, a police statement said.
Three minutes later, another explosion was reported on the 30th floor of the same building, which is used as an office.
A witness dining at a restaurant in the plaza on Hongqi Street told Beijing Daily that people had been asked to evacuate the buildings immediately as firefighters cleared the area for investigation.
“There must have been more than 20 explosions. The shopping mall asked people over the public address system to leave right away, and we ran for our lives,” the woman, identified only by her surname Zhang, said.
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She said she saw sparks around her as she ran out of the building.
Details of the incident remain sketchy. While the city government press office mentioned two explosions, some videos apparently taken at the scene backed up the reports of multiple blasts.
A video clip circulating online, which the South China Morning Post cannot independently verify, showed a bright beam of light accompanied by a bang from a room in a higher floor of the Wanda building, and another explosion and heavy smoke on the ground, with people running for safety.
The city government said the fire department had received reports of an explosion in the car park at 3.13pm and police and ambulances had rushed to the scene.
Police said initial investigations suggested the serial blasts were criminal acts, but did not offer further details about the case.
Nor did they give any clues about the possible suspects or motives behind the incident.
There have been occasional violent incidents in mainland China where people have used explosives to express their social grievances.
In May 2012, two villagers in Zhaotong, Yunnan province, paid an unwitting courier to deliver a backpack containing a bomb to a government service centre. The device was detonated via a mobile phone, killing the courier and three other people.
Police said the culprits, who were sentenced to death, were angry about the compensation they were being offered for land that had been appropriated for a new dam.
Additional reporting by Jun Mai and Matt Ho
