BEIJING – Homemade bombs exploded at three government buildings in a south China city within a half hour Thursday, killing two and wounding at least six others in what state media said was a revenge attack by a middle-aged jobless man.
The first bomb was in a car parked outside the prosecutor's office in Fuzhou city. That was followed by an explosion at a district government building and then another car bomb outside the drug administration office, said an official at the information office of Jiangxi province, where Fuzhou is located. He gave only his surname, Zhang.
The official Xinhua News Agency, citing police officials it did not further identify, said the bombs were apparently set by an unemployed 52-year-old city resident, Qian Mingqi, who was killed in one of the explosions. Provincial and city officials said they could not confirm the report.
Xinhua said Qian was involved in a dispute over the demolishing of his home. Messages posted to Twitter-like micro-blogging sites under the name Qian Mingqi described a frustrating, fruitless 10-year effort to obtain compensation after being forced from his home to make way for a highway. In a message posted Wednesday, Qian promised to take action. It could not be independently confirmed whether the messages were posted by the suspect in the attacks.
Photos from Fuzhou posted on Internet sites showed blown-out window frames, glass shards on the ground and a shirtless man in shorts lying prone outside a government building. Xinhua said the explosion shattered many windows in the eight-story prosecutor's office and at least 10 vehicles were damaged at Fuzhou's Linchuan district government building.
Two people died in the explosions and six were wounded, said Zhang, the official. Of the dead, one was found at the site of one explosion and the other died in a hospital, the Jiangxi Daily said on its website.
Homemade bombs are frequently used to settle scores in China, where fertilizer and explosives for construction are readily available and guns are tightly controlled. Earlier this month a bank cashier fired for stealing money hurled a gasoline bomb into the bank and injured dozens of people in western China.
Fuzhou, a city area with 4 million people deep in farm country, has seen the fast, chaotic economic growth typical of many Chinese cities in recent years. Land disputes have been a focal point for tensions as development encroaches on farmland.
During a forced eviction in a rural county on Fuzhou's outskirts last September, three members of a farming family caught fire — either in an intentional act of protest or, as the government later said, accidentally. The clash generated attention on the Internet and became a symbol of injustice.
