A false report of knife hackings had crowds running in China’s Guangzhou yesterday, a day after a knife fight between food peddlers in another Chinese city left six dead.
People dashed for safety when a suspected pickpocket in Guangzhou — who was being questioned by Chinese police — falsely shouted about hackings, Guangzhou police said.
The jitteriness came a day after the knife fight between two food stall owners in Changsha, also in southern China, left five people hacked to death and one person fatally shot by Chinese police.
Security concerns were already high after a knife attack two weeks ago in which 29 people were killed and 140 wounded in an incident blamed on ethnic Muslim Uighur separatists at the Kunming train station.
Unlike the Kunming attack, Friday’s violence appeared to stem from a personal dispute, but it may reinforce public prejudice against the Uighurs as the food vendors are believed to be Uighurs.
Police did not identify them as such, but a witness who gave only his surname, Chen, said the stand operators were Uighurs selling flatbread. Online news reports posted early on Friday that said they were Uighurs were later removed.
The crowd reaction in Guangzhou was the second such incident. On Friday, in Chengdu, in the center of China, dozens of shoppers at a busy mall fled in a panic because of false rumors of a knifing spree that were circulating online, Chengdu police said.
“Because of the incident that happened in Changsha, people started to panic and ran, but actually, nothing happened,” a Chengdu police official surnamed Xiang said.
In Beijing, Chinese police have beefed up security in patrolling areas with heavy traffic, such as malls, transport hubs and tourist sites.
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