BISHKEK, May 4 (Xinhua) -- A Bishkek court on Thursday started a hearing on the fact of an explosion at the Chinese Embassy in Kyrgyzstan that occurred last year.
The court interrogated the eyewitnesses of the explosion. The hearing will be continued till May 17.
On Aug. 30, 2016, a suicide bomber rammed the western gates of the Chinese Embassy in Bishkek with a Mitsubishi Delica car. An improvised explosive device inside the car was detonated after the vehicle entered embassy grounds.
Two Kyrgyz employees of the embassy and three Chinese people were injured. The buildings of the embassy were extensively damaged and the work of the embassy was partially suspended.
The suicide bomber was a member of the terrorist organization the East Turkistan Islamic Movement, a Uighur named Zoir Khalilov, who had a passport from Tajikistan.
The Kyrgyz security committee has detained five accomplices of the terrorist act, who are natives of Kyrgyzstan's Osh and Jalal-Abad regions, four ethnic Uzbeks and one Kyrgyz, who are considered to be the members of the extremist organizations "Jabhad-ul-Nusra" and "Jamaat Tawhid Wa Jihad," which were active in Syria.
The criminal case was initiated by the State Committee for National Security of the Kyrgyz Republic.
