KUNMING, July 26 (Xinhua) -- Five days after a pair
of fatal bus explosions, police in Kunming, a city in southwest China's Yunnan
Province, are struggling to find clues about the mysterious blasts.
The explosions occurred on two Route 54 buses during
the morning rush hour in Kunming, the provincial capital, on Monday, leaving two
dead and 14 injured.
One blast occurred at Panjiawan bus stop on West Renmin
Road at 7:10 a.m., while the other took place at the intersection of
Changyuan Road and West Renmin Road at 8:05 a.m. as the bus was about to reach
its final stop at the Minshan area.
On Wednesday, the local security authorities in
Kunming on tripled the reward offer to 300,000 yuan (about 43,500 U.S. dollars)
for information that could help to solve the two blasts.
No helpful information been proffered so far.
The manhunt for the perpetrator(s), however, is still
ongoing.
Victims who were hospitalized for injury in the
explosions were taken to the sites of the blasts on Friday by police hoping to
jog their memory for useful information.
Among them was Han Xianming, the fiance of Wang Dezhi
who was killed in the explosion at Panjiawan bus stop, according to a report
posted on Eastday.com.
Han, also identified as Han Guangming in other news
items run previously, said he and the others injured were led onto an empty bus
parked in an open space at Minshan. They were told to be seated just as they
were before the blast, trying hard to remember faces getting on and off the bus.
Police officers were taking notes of what they said.
"Give me one yuan change, later on I can pay the fare
easily" was the last words Han remembered Wang uttering before her death.
Wang sat in a seat opposite Han after getting on the
bus. Han changed to another seat after its occupant got off. "The explosion went
off within less than 10 seconds after I had sat down," Han recalled.
Before the blast, the couple were heading for Wang's
home to celebrate the fifth birthday of her daughter from a previous marriage.
To nab the culprits quickly on the day of the blasts,
some 300 police officers fanned out all along stops of the entire No. 54 service
route. This included 100 officers positioned at the bus depot at Minshan and the
Panjiawan bus stop, trying to find passengers who rode on the two ill-fated
buses.
In addition, traffic police also tightened inspection
over taxis as of Friday, alongside improved checks at the border and over
transient people.
In a related development, police in Yangzhou, a
scenic city in the eastern Jiangsu Province, on Thursday detained a man surnamed
Wang. He was under suspicion of concocting and deliberately causing panic among
the society by using the bus explosions in Kunming to spreading fake
information.
The 23-year-old, a native of Jingshan in the central
Hubei Province, had migrated to Yangzhou. He stayed with his parents peddling
vegetables in the city upon completion of his senior high school education,
according to Yangzhou City Security Bureau.
Shortly after the blasts in Kunming on Monday, Wang
read about it and then posted a line under the name of "hostile forces" on an
unidentified website. He claimed to be responsible for the two explosions and
threatened to carry out more in future.
Wang confessed during a police interrogation that he
made the acts with the purposes of getting more, stronger attention and worship
from netizens.