Olympic terror fears as China bus bomb kills two

At least two people were killed by bombs placed on board buses in a southern Chinese city this morning, causing consternation three weeks before the Olympics open.REUTERSThe first explosion happened at 7.05am on board a bus at a stop on People's Road West, one of the main thoroughfares of Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province. Yunnan borders Vietnam, Burma and Tibet in China's far south.One person was killed and another ten injured, according to local media. Websites showed photographs of the bus with a gaping hole in its side and glass all over the road.The second explosion happened on another bus on the same road about an hour later. Another person was killed and a further four injured.According to some reports, there was a third explosion later in the morning, in which two people were killed and one injured, but this was discounted by some local officials.The motive for the attacks was unclear, but police said they were clearly acts of sabotage."According to preliminary investigations, the explosions were cases of man-made, deliberate sabotage," a spokesman said. Police were using roadblocks and checkpoints in a bid to catch those responsible, according to the state news agency.The authorities have repeatedly warned of the danger posed by terrorism to the Beijing Olympics, using it to justify intense security preparations in the capital.They say there is a particular threat from "Uighur and Tibetan separatism". Uighurs are Muslim, and the main ethnic group in Xinjiang province to the north-west, and police say a Uighur separatist group known as the East Turkestan Islamic Movement is linked to al-Qaeda.Yunnan is an ethnically diverse province, home to large numbers of both Tibetans and Muslims. But Chinese cities are also occasionally hit by more mundane acts of terror, in which aggrieved citizens take revenge for lack of legal recourse by random acts of violence.At the weekend, there was a violent riot in a Yunnan town close to the Burmese border about the price a state rubber company was paying local farmers. Two people were shot dead by police as they tried to restore order.