Reuters has a line in its article that it "may" be connected to police killing two rubber farmers a couple days ago. No evidence yet though.

Why are you using the headline "Bus bombings in Kunming" at the top of the main page? It may have been a bombing, but until that is confirmed, the headline is needlessly sensationalistic, not to mention misleading. All we know now is that there were explosions -- that is not the same thing as a bombing.

Andrew Galbraith: When two buses explode in one Chinese city in the same day and for the same reason (the explosion is clearly not from the engine, as the photos show) - it's a bombing. In addition, the local police already confirmed the buses were "attacked".

What do you suggest? "Kunming police grapples with public transport crisis", "Two buses malfunction in the city of eternal spring", " Two people die in a freak traffic accident"?

Sorry, but it's not a bombing unless it's confirmed as such. It's been confirmed now, but when the story was first posted, it would have been better to just refer to them as what they were — explosions.

My roommate's friend in Kunming said that he heard there were actually 5 explosions, one of which may have been in a supermarket. Anyone to corroborate?

I don't think this can possibly be connected to the clash with rubber farmers 2 days ago. First it was too fast. No one can plan such an attack so fast. Even making a bomb takes longer than that. Second why would they take their anger out on normal people? If it is the police they hate, they would have blow up a police station or a police car or anything related to the authorities.

Anon, you seem to *know* that bomb making is time-consuming? Don’t draw too much attention to yourself, eh ;-)

Whilst this would be an unprecendented departure for angry Chinese farmers, you ought to concede that groups with a grievance generally don't target their nemesis directly or take great pains to avoid civilian casualties when drawing attention to their cause.

Perhaps a lone nutter? (yeah, yeah, >1 blast but he could have walked around town..)

Whatever.....I only caught this story today but what I find more interesting (revealing, perhaps?) is that there's no hullabaloo about "splittist/criminal elements" or references to the Games.

In fact searching for "blast & Kunming" produced no results on Xinhua?!?

*China Daily has a few more details in Bus blasts rock Kunming Kill 2

References therein to a (similar?) blast in Shanghai & the military nature of the compound used, but it’s halfway down the front page - no photos. No fuss.

The fact that the British are now anti-Beijing Duck seems more .....news-worthy. A dead-cert for mobilising the wu mao dang?

Oh, and I notice the Kunming story is under their Language Tips section (???) with a helpful ESL-type audio & a reading comprehension quiz at the bottom of the article too. Make of that what you will...

*sorry if I didn't HTLM that link properly.

Evidently somebody in Kunming sent the following text message warning around 5:30 am before the bombings:
“蝼蚁总动员……希望收到此短信的市民，不要在明天早上乘坐54、64、及84路工（公）交车……”
The Guardian translates it into English as:
"The general mobilisation of ants... (I) hope citizens receiving this message will not take bus lines 54, 64 and 84 tomorrow morning,"

Phoenix_Chinese

Guardian

Good digging Spelunker, how did you get the Guardian link?

Did you just see the tickertape zip by as you were looking at Sports? Their search function doesn't seem to pick up feed articles...

A lesson there for all, Dont be so anti- or worse still, anty.

(Oh merde! I sprayed a load of them in the kichen last night)

No seriously I'm gonna scan chinese SMS's before deleting from now on.

(must imprint character for ant..must imprint character for ant..must imprint character for ant..must imprint character for ant..)

Kunming police chief Du Min (who is also the city's vice mayor) is now saying reports of any text message warning are rumors.
Du Min also says the Kunming bus explosions have no proven links to the Yunnan rubber farmers or to any anti-Olympics terrorism.
This latest news is currently being reported in Hong Kong media as well, including "Ming Bao".

Here are the relevant links:

English

Chinese

LATEST UPDATE:
The first photo of the text message just appeared on Shanghai's Oriental Morning Post and Sina.com from 2 Oriental Morning Post reporters based in Kunming (Zhou Wen Tian and Zhao Jing):

http://www.dfdaily.com/node2/node1430/userobject1ai104308.shtml

http://news.sina.com.cn/o/2008-07-23/062814204038s.shtml

Let's see what Kunming police chief/vice mayor Du Min says at the next press conference!