At Least 16 Dead In Bus Blast

A bus exploded in the central Chinese city of Wuhan Saturday, killing 16 people and injuring 30 others, a Chinese news agency reported.

But a Hong Kong-based dissident group quoted an unidentified source in Wuhan as saying at least 30 people were killed in the explosion, which it said was believed to have been caused by a bomb.

The China News Service, monitored in Hong Kong, said the explosion occurred when the bus was approaching a bridge in the city in Hubei province.

It said traffic in the area was halted for four hours, and that officials were investigating the cause of the explosion.

The Hong Kong-based Information Center of Human Rights and Democratic Movement in China quoted its source as saying that the bus was gutted by fire after the explosion. The source went to the scene after the explosion and concluded, based on the damage, it was caused by a bomb.

In a statement, the group said two taxis and three other buses were also damaged in the blast. The group is known to have good sources in China's dissident community.

The Information Center also says Wuhan residents suspect that the bomb was planted by disgruntled employees laid off from money-losing state enterprises or by Uighur separatists from the western Moslem region of Xinjiang.

Uighur militants want to create an independent state of "East Turkestan" in Xinjiang, which borders Afghanistan, Pakistan, and three mostly Moslem Central Asian states.

A notice was issued by the Ministry of Public Security last month calling for heightened vigilance in the capital and in Xinjiang, according to the sources.

Several explosions rocked China last year:

• Last February, nine people were killed and 74 injured when three bus bombings rocked Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang.
• Beijing authorities are still investigating a bomb blast that injured 10 people on a bus in a busy shopping district last March.
• Last month, a Chinese farmer who had lost a leg in a train accident killed himself and three others in a bomb attack on the Ministry of Railways in Beijing. Five others were injured in the attack.

  ©1998 CBS Worldwide Corp. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report