Home-made Gunpowder Causes Campus Explosions

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Thursday, February 27, 2003

Home-made Gunpowder Causes Campus Explosions

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Home-made Gunpowder Causes Campus Blasts

According to a preliminary police investigation, home-made gunpowder bombs caused the two dining hall explosions of Qinghua and Beijing Universities in Beijing mid Tuesday, said a spokesman for Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau.

Intensified police investigation is under way, the spokesman noted, and the police would spare no effort to look into the two assaults and break the cases.

In one bomb attack, six people were injured -- four teachers and two students, namely, one engaged in post-doctoral studies and another non-resident student -- when the explosion rocked a dining hall at Beijing's prestigious Qinghua (or Tsinghua) University at around 11:50 a.m. while faculty and students were having their lunches.

About one and a half hours later, another three victims were injured -- none of them critically -- in an explosion around 1:20 p.m. in the Nongyuan dining hall of Beijing University, which is within easy reach of Qinghua University. The three injured were not regular students or teachers, but working in the dining hall, who were respectively a canteen manager, a sanitary worker and a non-resident student from a nearby private college hired to work at the dining all.

The campus order at both nationally renowned universities is quite normal at present and both their teachers and students are in good mood, with no further incidents ever reported, said the spokesman.

Campus Life Returns to Normal

Campus life at China's two most prestigious universities has returned to normal several hours after two simultaneous explosions.

Tuesday's job fair for graduates at Beijing University proceeded normally, drawing approximately 10,000 participants and concluding at 4 p.m.

Students were seen scanning the film posters at the Beijing University cinema.

The only difference can be seen in the dining halls.

"We have received more customers than usual," said a waitress in a Beijing University dining hall.

Several students said they would be on the lookout for any suspicious people carrying large bags in the dining hall.

Students learned the news through an official announcement placed on the website of Beijing University one hour after the explosion occurred, which was intended to restore calm to the campuses, explained a teacher at Beijing University.

"Who did this, and what for? " asked students via the Internet.

When the darkness of the night curtained on the campuses, the front yards of the libraries were still filled with neat lines of bicycles and sporadic sounds of peddlers at fresh fruit stalls could be heard in surrounding university residences.

By People's Daily Online

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