Beijing (AFP) - Chinese police have captured five suspects over a "terrorist attack" in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, they said Wednesday, the first time authorities have admitted to such a strike taking place in the capital.
Beijing police said on a verified social media account that three people in the sports utility vehicle which crashed in the symbolic heart of the Chinese state and burst into flames on Monday, all of whom died, were from the same family -- one man, his wife and his mother.
The car had a licence plate identifying it as from the restive western region of Xinjiang, police said, and the names given for the trio sounded like ones used by the mostly Muslim Uighur ethnic minority.
Another five people have been arrested in connection with the case, police said.
It was a "carefully planned, organised and premeditated violent terrorist attack", the statement said, adding that the car carried petrol, knives and banners bearing extremist religious content.
The suspects crashed the vehicle, "ignited the petrol inside the car so the car caught on fire" and the three people inside "died at the scene".
Police said two tourists were killed in the incident, which took place close to a huge portrait of Mao Zedong hanging from the walls of the Forbidden City, and that another 40 people were injured.
Police had alerted hotels in the capital to look out for eight suspects from Xinjiang, most of them apparently from China's mainly Muslim Uighur ethnic minority, who are concentrated in the region.
Witnesses and reports said that in Monday's incident a vehicle drove along a stretch of pavement near the Forbidden City, a former imperial palace and popular tourist site next to Tiananmen Square, knocking over pedestrians before bursting into flames, in what appeared to be a deliberate act.
