On 1 March 2014, a group of five knife-wielding terrorists attacked passengers in the Kunming Railway Station in Kunming, Yunnan, China, killing 31 people, and wounding 143 others. The attackers pulled out long-bladed knives and stabbed and slashed passengers at random. Four assailants were shot to death by police on the spot and one injured perpetrator was arrested. Police announced on 3 March that the six-man, two-woman group had been neutralized, after the arrest of three remaining suspects.
No group claimed responsibility for the attack and no ties to any organization have been identified; in effect the group was a singular terror cell. Xinhua News Agency and the government of Kunming said that the attack had been linked to Sunni extremists which were a faction of Xinjiang separatists. Police said that they had confiscated a black, hand-painted East Turkestan flag at the scene, which is associated with the Uyghur separatists from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.
At 21:12 on 1 March 2014, a group of five individuals, all dressed in black clothes and armed with knives and cleavers, rushed into a waiting area of Kunming railway station, attacking people indiscriminately. From their starting point, the group moved separately through the station square, the second ticket area, the ticket main hall, and the small baggage storage area. Witnesses described two of the attackers, who lingered at the ticket counters as a man and a woman, both around 30 years old and 170 cm in height, the former slightly overweight with medium hair and the latter wearing a headscarf.
Several people hid in various businesses at the station, which were protected by roller shutters. A post office with five security guards first sheltered 40 people, with the number growing to nearly a hundred by the time the attack was resolved. Chen Fang stated that nearly 200 people were hiding inside her 80 m2 (860 sq ft) restaurant for an hour, with many having to stand on tables, chairs, and the kitchen's stoves. Several dozen people shared a hiding spot in the restroom.
Xie Lin, a captain of the Kunming Railway Police Station, overheard the commotion from the initial attack and called in an apparent group fight after seeing several injured on the floor. While Xie guided passengers and staff members out, deputy station director Zhang Liyuan arrived in the waiting area, where he confronted one attacker, whom he kept at bay until Xie returned with three other officers, fellow railway policeman Peng Bin, and traffic police Yu Meng and Li Rui. Like Zhang, they were armed only with batons. As the five officers restrained the first attacker, two more armed persons came up behind them. The officers attempted to push back the attackers to the empty parking lot outside, with Zhang shouting "Come here, go chase me, come cut me!" ("来来，来追我，来砍我！"). The trio, two men and one woman, eventually ran off further into the station, with the three railway officers chasing after them.
When a security guard ran at the frontmost attacker, Zhang reached for the one in front of him, but this attacker turned around and slashed his left hand, severing his index finger and the top of his thumb. Zhang's attacker joined the second in injuring the intervening security guard before stabbing the other two police officers, Xie in the head and Peng in the abdomen. At 21:19, the three attackers escaped through the bus depot onto Zhanqian Road. Though heavily wounded, the three officers remained in pursuit, being joined by arriving police and passersby. The attack lasted around twelve minutes.
According to China Central Television, a four-man SWAT team from the Guandu branch of Kunming Municipal Public Security Bureau was on site within ten minutes of the start of the knife attack. At around 21:35, all five attackers were surrounded at the intersection of Beijing Road and Yongping Road. Police initially attempted to subdue the attackers using tear-gas shells but were unable to do so. The sole member of the team with an automatic weapon shot five of the attackers in rapid succession, killing four of them, after two warning shots were fired. A wounded female suspect was detained at the scene and sent to a hospital.
Initial reports had incorrectly indicated ten assailants. China News Service quoted a "Mr. Tan", who remembered seven to eight attackers indiscriminately slashing people regardless of age, even stabbing the wounded on the floor until they were dead. He also saw a police officer carrying a child of about five years of age, with slashed trousers and blood streaming down their legs. Traveller Zuo Ruoxing, who was travelling with his friend Pan Huabing, also recalled seven or eight men, with one attempting to stab Pan's daughter, though the girl's father ended up taking the fatal injury to the throat.
After the incident, all trains originally scheduled to stop at Kunming Station were directed to stop elsewhere until 23:00 on 1 March when services gradually resumed.
Personnel at the Changshui International Airport also held an emergency meeting and tightened security though they stated that they were operating normally. There were scattered news reports suggesting that similar attacks occurred in Dashuying (大树营) in the Jinma subdistrict of Kunming, but local police stated that reports of "several places suffering attacks" were only rumors.
The assailants killed 31 people and injured 143 (including seven policemen). Two security guards, identified by their surnames Liu and Ding, were killed while attempting to subdue the perpetrators. The wounded were transported in public buses and treated at 11 hospitals in Kunming.
The Red Cross Society of China sent a team to Yunnan in the morning of 2 March to support the Yunnan Red Cross Society in assisting with rescue efforts and to provide counseling to the relatives of victims and shocked civilians.
On 2 March, armed police patrolled the area around Kunming Railway Station. In the early morning, locals put flowers on the square in front of the station to mourn the dead. At 13:00, the Kunming Police disclosed information on two suspects, one woman and one man, according to statements of witnesses.
In the aftermath of the attack, heavy police presence was noted in Dashuying, a low-income ghetto that houses many of Kunming's Uyghurs, and local residents were questioned by police.
Yunnan's Communist Party Secretary Qin Guangrong said on 4 March that he had allocated sufficient resources to help the victims, who would not have to bear medical costs. Emergency services had processed the injured, and compensation arrangements were being discussed. Qin said that the absence of a clear threat up to that point meant terrorism prevention had not been a high priority in Yunnan. He admitted to inadequacies in resources, policing and intelligence gathering.
On 3 March the Ministry of Public Security announced that police had arrested three suspects and said that an eight-person terrorist group was responsible for the attack, with five direct perpetrators and three others involved only in plotting.
The attackers were named as Abdurehim Kurban, Ahmat Abiti, Mangshar Shartar, Almira Tursun, and Patigul Tohti. Kurban was identified as the leader of the group, while Tohti, pregnant at the time of the attack, was the sole surviving member. Voice of America, a news network owned by the United States government, claimed that there had been scant information from official sources as to the identities, or even evidence that the attackers were Uyghurs.
Qin Guangrong said that the captured wounded suspect had confessed to the crime. He asserted the group, composed of thirteen people, was founded in December 2013, with the goal of participating in jihad abroad. It's alleged that they consumed material on making explosives and trained themselves to engage in terrorist acts, planning to cooperate with foreign terror groups as well. The group had moved frequently through southern China, including Guangzhou, Zhuhai, Nanyang, and Lanzhou, being last headquartered at a barber shop in Shadian District, Gejiu, Yunnan. After two failed attempts to cross the Chinese border on 24 and 26 February 2014, which resulted in the arrest of three of their members, the group decided to carry out an attack on the railway station of either Geiju or Kunming, purchasing over ten bladed weapons in advance. According to authorities, the group of five attackers departed Shadian in a rented car at 17:30, arriving at Kunming's railway station three hours later.