Firing on Foreigners’ Compound in Beijing May Have Been Planned

The U.S. Embassy in Beijing has evidence that the shooting by Chinese soldiers last month at foreign diplomats’ apartments was a planned, coordinated attack, U.S. officials said Sunday.

The officials, who declined to be identified, said the U.S. Embassy will likely lodge a new complaint this week with the Chinese Foreign Ministry over findings in a report compiled last week on the June 7 shooting incident.

An embassy investigation of the incident indicated that a Chinese soldier directed the gunfire and that some shooting may have come from a nearby building, along with that from troops on a street below the diplomats’ apartments, officials said.

Several Americans and other foreigners, including children, narrowly escaped injury when the Chinese troops fired hundreds of bullets into the front of a high-rise apartment building in a compound where foreign diplomats and journalists reside. The Chinese government said the soldiers were firing at a sniper.

The shooting came four days after the Chinese army brutally suppressed the democracy movement, cleared central Tian An Men Square of thousands of student-led protesters and enforced the martial-law decree announced May 20.