China rail station attack leaves 27 dead

Attacks by “knife-wielding men” at a Chinese train station late Saturday left 27 people dead and 109 injured, the state news agency Xinhua reported.

Police shot dead a number of the attackers at Kunming railway station in the southwestern province of Yunnan and sealed off a wide area around the site, according to the posts by local television station K6 on its official Sina Weibo account, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter.

Meanwhile ambulances delivered the injured to hospitals around the city, it added.

Photos posted on the social media site showed blood spattered across the floor and medical staff crouching over bodies lying on the ground, although the authenticity of the images could not be verified.

Crowds gathered outside the station among police officers and ambulances, the images also showed.

Yunnan has no history of violent attacks and the motive for the stabbings was not immediately clear.