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Security camera footage shows the man boarding the bus before lighting and throwing a package. Photo: Weibo

Man throws explosive onto bus in China, 17 injured in blast caught on camera

  • Police hunt 44-year-old suspect who boarded bus and set fire to package
  • Injured passengers in stable condition after explosion that blew out the vehicle’s windows

Seventeen people were injured in an explosion on a bus in southwestern China on Wednesday evening and police are searching for a 44-year-old male suspect, local media reported on Thursday.

In security camera footage being circulated on social media, a man can be seen boarding the bus in Jiajiang county, near the city of Leshan in Sichuan province, and lighting a package wrapped in cloth before flinging it further into the vehicle, which quickly becomes engulfed in flames.

Local police said they believed the culprit was Lu Shibing, a Jiajiang local, and urged the public to provide information.

The injured were sent to hospital and all are in a stable condition, according to the Jiajiang county police’s WeChat account.

Other video footage, from The Beijing News, showed a bus stationary on a busy road, with smoke pouring from the front.

The windows of the bus had been blown out by the explosion, according to Shanghai-based news portal Thepaper.cn.

China has had a spate of bus attacks in recent years. The latest incident was similar to another explosion on a bus in Leshan in June, which injured 15 people.

In January 2017, police in Foshan in southern China’s Guangdong province arrested a man who had twice blown up buses, injuring six in total.

In 2013, a man in Xiamen in the southeastern Fujian province set fire to a bus, killing himself and 46 others and injuring 34.

In October this year, an angry passenger attacked a bus driver and sent the vehicle plunging into the Yangtze River, killing 15 people on board. It put incidents on buses into the national spotlight, with a string of similar cases being exposed and calls for improved safety on public transport.

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: 17 hurt as man throws explosive inside Sichuan bus
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