CHINA: Blasts caused by homemade explosives tore through cafeterias at China's top two universities within two hours of each other yesterday, injuring at least nine people, police and school authorities said.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the blasts, which shocked students accustomed to lives of relative safety on the Peking and Tsinghua university campuses.
The first explosion occurred at a cafeteria for Tsinghua faculty, shortly before noon, and slightly injured six people, university spokesman Mr Jiang Yunhong told reporters.
The injured - four Tsinghua professors, a teacher from another university and a student from the Beijing Broadcasting Institute - were rushed to hospital, Mr Jiang said.
Tsinghua is the alma mater of Premier Zhu Rongji and Communist Party chief and Vice-President Hu Jintao.
Another blast ripped through a dining hall kitchen at nearby Peking University at around 1.30 p.m., slightly injuring three cafeteria workers, a university spokeswoman said.
Fuelled by easy access to explosives, China has seen bombings linked to disgruntled workers, spurned lovers and Muslim separatists in recent years. But yesterday's bombs, which appeared to be linked, were the first at these universities.
The explosions came as police tightened security ahead of the annual session of the National People's Congress, or parliament, which opens next week.
"Initial police investigations show the two explosions were caused by homemade black gunpowder explosives," Mr Liu Wei, spokesman for Beijing's Public Security Bureau, told reporters.
Police cordoned off the cafeterias at both campuses and launched investigations.
Meanwhile, rescue workers with search dogs combed the rubble of flattened villages in near freezing weather in north-west China yesterday, in hopes of finding survivors from an earthquake that killed at least 265 people.
Monday's quake, the worst to hit the Xinjiang region since the communists took power in 1949, also injured 4,000 people, said officials in Bachu county, the worst-hit area, about 1,000 km from the regional capital, Urumqi.
Bachu officials told Reuters at least 265 people had died, and more than 2,000 seriously injured were taken to hospital in neighbouring counties and in the nearby Silk Road oasis of Kashgar.
The Urumqi Evening News reported that 50,000 were left homeless or otherwise hit by the disaster.
More than 10,000 homes, schools and other buildings had collapsed across eight counties, while 40,000 others suffered damage, China's ministry of civil affairs said in a facsimile message.
Aftershocks rattled survivors and more than 5,000 soldiers, militia and police joined the round-the-clock rescue effort.
They sifted rubble with bare hands, spades and pickaxes while crews used motion detectors and dogs to hunt survivors.