Dozens killed in China knife attack

At least 28 people have been killed and 113 injured after a group of knife-wielding assailants attacked a train station in south-western China, state media said.

The Xinhua News Agency did not identify who might have been responsible for the attack at the Kunming railway station in Yunnan province, but said authorities considered it to be "an organised, premeditated, violent terrorist attack".

In an indication of how seriously authorities viewed the attack, one of China's deadliest in recent years, the country's top police official, Politburo member Meng Jianzhu, was on route to Kunming, the Communist Party-run People's Daily reported.

The violence in Kunming came at a sensitive time as political leaders in Beijing prepared for Wednesday's opening of the annual meeting of the nominal legislature where the government of President Xi Jinping will deliver its first one-year work report.

A Xinhua reporter on the scene in Kunming said several suspects had been "controlled" while police continued their investigation of people at the station. The reporter said firefighters and emergency medical personnel were at the station and rushing injured people to hospitals for treatment.

The authorities said five suspects were shot dead but that their identities had not yet been confirmed, Xinhua reported. Overall, 28 people were confirmed dead and 113 injured, it said.

A dozen bodies could be seen at Kunming No 1 People's Hospital, where more than 60 victims of the attack had been taken by midnight, according to Xinhua reporters at the hospital. A doctor at the hospital said doctors were so busy treating the injured that they were still not sure of the exact number of casualties.

Yang Haifei, a Yunnan province resident who was being treated at the hospital for wounds to his chest and back, told Xinhua that he was buying a ticket when he saw a group of people, most of them dressed in black, rush into the station and start attacking people.

"I saw a person come straight at me with a long knife and I ran away with everyone," he told Xinhua, adding that people who were slower ended up severely injured. "They just fell on the ground," he said.