Tiananmen Square crash leaves 5 dead

(UPI) -- Five people were killed and another 38 injured when a jeep served off the road, slamming into a crowd and catching fire in Beijing's Tiananmen Square at noon Monday.

The three people in the jeep were among those killed, as were a female Philippine tourist and a male tourist from China's Guangdong Province, Chinese state media said.

A male tourist from the Philippines and a male tourist from Japan were among those in the crowd who were injured.

The identities of the jeep's passengers have not been released.

Witnesses said the jeep hit the guardrail of Jinshui Bridge, which crosses the moat of the Forbidden City, at 12:05 p.m. Traffic was closed on the bridge until 1:05 p.m.

But while official accounts of the incident were tightly controlled, others speculated as to what might have caused the crash -- and whether it was an accident.

"There was a loud explosion. It must have been intentional," one witness said. Others described seeing the car drive through the crowd, as if on purpose, and exploding into flames just below the portrait of Mao that hangs in the square.

The Chinese are particularly sensitive to incidents in Tiananmen, deploying responses to any events with impressive efficiency. The square was the site of a student-led uprising in 1989, which was eventually crushed by the military.

Images of the aftermath were quickly removed from Chinese websites and social networks, but some filtered out onto Twitter despite the censors' efforts.