Police investigating Wednesday’s deadly homemade bomb attack outside the Chinese Communist Party office the northern city of Taiyuan have detained a suspect.
The series of blasts killed one and injured at least eight others. Feng Zhijun, a 41-year old ex-convict who lived in the city, admitted to the crime, reported state newswire Xinhua.
Seven explosions rocked Taiyuan, the provincial capital of Shanxi province, during Wednesday morning’s rush hour. The homemade bombs went off nearly simultaneously and showered the area with ball bearings and metal pellets, sending government workers ducking for cover.
The blasts came hard on the heels of the attack in Tiananmen Square. On Oct. 28, a car plowed through crowds at the eastern approach to the Forbidden City, in central Beijing, and burst into flames at the north end of the square. The wreck killed 5, including three people in the car, and injured 40. Beijing police say it was a terror attack organized by Uighur radicals from China’s far-north west.
Officials have so far released few details on Feng, though the headline on the Xinhua reports that he is “Chinese”—in other words, not Uighur, or one of China’s many other minority groups. It will be interesting to see how the case is handled compared to the Tiananmen incident, and whether Zheng, the alleged builder of multiple bombs, will be labeled a terrorist or merely a rogue ex-con.