Farm Worker Held in Bombings at Two Universities in Beijing

The police seized a farm worker today who they say has confessed to setting off explosions late last month at two Beijing universities. The arrest apparently concluded a nationwide dragnet for the person who caused the rare terrorist incidents in China’s tightly patrolled capital. A police spokesman told reporters that the man, Huang Minxiang, 27, had been apprehended in his home province of Fujian in southeastern China and had immediately confessed to causing both explosions, which came within two hours of each other. “He has unreservedly confessed to causing this incident,” the spokesman, Liu Wei, said. The blasts were set at cafeterias at Beijing University and Qinghua University at the lunch hour on Feb. 25. At least nine people were wounded and glass was shattered in the areas around the blasts. The explosions alarmed students accustomed to relative quiet and tight security in the sprawling, gated campuses of China’s most elite universities. Though Muslim separatists from the Xinjiang region have been accused of causing explosions in the Chinese capital in the past, the latest bombing led to concerns that China might not be as isolated as people here once believed from the wave of terrorist bombings that has hit the United States, Indonesia and other nations. Full Story