Bomb Hoax In Beijing

A man claiming to have a bomb held employees of the Reuters news agency in their Beijing bureau Wednesday, saying he was protesting corruption in China, the agency said. Authorities said the man later surrendered.

The man holed up inside with agency employees for what appeared to be more than an hour, but a company spokeswoman said all were later released. The official Xinhua News Agency said the device the man carried was "a hoax."

Beijing police spokesman Liu Wei confirmed that all Reuters staffers had been safely evacuated. Later he said the man, identified as Fang Qinghui, born in 1968, surrendered to police shortly after 2 p.m.

"It is believed that he's suffering from mental illness," Liu said. He did not say what charges were lodged against Fang.

The incident happened during a week when China's legislature is meeting to elevate new top leaders and security in the capital is heightened.

Fang entered the agency's bureau on the sixth floor of the building, in eastern Beijing, and said he was protesting corruption in the Chinese government, Reuters said. Outside, Reuters staffers who were not in the office at the time of the incident gathered at police cordons.

A Reuters dispatch said the assailant wore a black jacket and sunglasses and carried a black bag with wires hanging out of it. His finger was on a red button. "I am doing this for justice," Reuters quoted him as saying.

It said he identified himself a former steel worker from the northern province of Heilongjiang who had been unemployed for five to six years. "I want the whole world to know how black China is, how corrupt it is," the agency quoted Fang as saying.

Reuters said the agency set up a television camera and filmed Fang after he requested coverage.

Outside the building, scores of police officers cordoned off the area. They would not comment on the situation inside, though some bystanders said police had told them the incident was only an "exercise."

Reuters, with headquarters in London, is part of the public Reuters Group PLC. It supplies news, financial information and television video, among other services, to clients worldwide.

A spokeswoman at the management office of the complex, Shengfu Building, said building employees were helping evacuate people. Reached by telephone, she refused to give further information or her name.

Last month, two bombs exploded on the same day on the campuses of Tsinghua and Peking universities, two of the capital's most prestigious. A suspect was arrested Saturday and brought back to Beijing in a raid that made the front pages of many newspapers Sunday.

By Christopher Bodeen