Five detained over Tian'anmen terrorist attack

Chinese police have identified Monday's deadly crash at downtown Beijing's Tian'anman Square as a terrorist attack and five suspects have been detained.

The attack was "carefully planned, organized and premeditated," police said.

With the cooperation of police authorities including those in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Beijing police have captured five suspects who had been at large, a spokesman with the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau said on Wednesday.

Usmen Hasan, his mother, Kuwanhan Reyim, and his wife, Gulkiz Gini, drove a jeep with a Xinjiang plate to crash into a crowd of people at noon on Monday, killing two people and injuring another 40, the spokesman said.

The jeep crashed into a guardrail of Jinshui Bridge across the moat of the Forbidden City. The three people in the jeep died after they set gasoline inside the vehicle on fire, according to the spokesman.

Police found gasoline, equipment full of gasoline, two knives and steel sticks as well as a flag with extremist religious content in the jeep.

Police have also found knives and at least one "jihad" flag in the temporary residence of the five detained suspects.

The suspects caught in connection with the incident are Husanjan Wuxur, Gulnar Tuhtiniyaz, Yusup Umarniyaz, Bujanat Abdukadir and Yusup Ahmat.

According to the spokesman, they admitted that they knew Usmen Hasan and conspired to plan and carry out the attack. They said they had not expected that the police could capture them only about 10 hours after the incident.

Further investigation into the case is under way.