Postal service orders tighter mail security following mail bombings

China’s postal service is ordering tighter checks on packages following a series of mail bombings that killed 10 people and injured 51.
Mail carriers and overnight delivery services must conduct additional checks for explosives, dangerous chemicals, weapons, gunpowder and poisons, the State Post Bureau said on its website over the weekend. Closer cooperation with police will also be required.
The order follows a series of 18 explosions in the southern region of Guangxi on Wednesday and Thursday blamed on a 33-year-old man, Wei Yinyong, who had long-standing disputes with neighbors and companies involved in stone quarrying.
The explosions hit a hospital, markets, a shopping mall, a bus station and several government buildings.
China’s state news agency reported Friday that the Wei died in the blasts. A DNA analysis determined that he was among those killed, Xinhua said.
Wei made timed explosive devices and either planted them or hired people to deliver them, the official Xinhua News Agency said, citing police in Liuzhou city, which administers Liucheng county.
The blasts came on the eve of a seven-day national holiday in the country, a time when tens of millions of Chinese travel.
There have been a series of cases in China in which people with grievances or who were involved in feuds have used homemade bombs to blow up themselves and others, although the number of bombs used in the small county of Liucheng appears unprecedented.
Bombs are often the weapon of choice because firearms are tightly controlled and difficult to obtain.
The number of bombs used in the Guangxi attacks appeared unprecedented, however, especially considering that they all were delivered within the single small county of Liucheng. MDT/AP