Two people died and more than 10 were injured in a bus blaze in central China today that some eye-witnesses said was started by a passenger, the official Xinhua agency reported.
The fire consumed an airport shuttle bus in Changsha, the capital of Hunan province, leaving a burnt-out frame blocking part of the airport expressway near a tollgate.
Originally reported as an explosion, the incident took place around 4pm local time. Xinhua quoted eyewitnesses saying they believed the attack was arson, but gave no further detail.
The semi-official China News Service quoted a woman who said she had been a passenger on the bus and saw a man put a lighter to a bag that "smelt of gasoline", shortly before the explosion.
China is struggling to contain social tensions, and anger over issues ranging from the cost of health care to a rapidly widening rich-poor gap in the past has exploded into violence, with buses a common target.
Last year a passenger ignited gasoline on a bus in southwestern Chengdu, killing 27 and injuring dozens more. Another 24 people died in July in a shuttle bus fire in Wuxi, near Shanghai, started by a disgruntled steel worker.
In 2005 a 42-year-old farmer with terminal lung cancer set off a home-made bomb aboard a bus in southeastern China, in a suicide attack that wounded 31.
And earlier this year more than 27 people died in a wave of school stabbings that horrified the country.
Ethnic tensions in Western China exploded into deadly rioting in 2008 and 2009, but Hunan is far from the troubled Tibet and Xinjiang regions, where most previous violence or alleged plots against Chinese rule have occurred.
Reuters