Blast occurs outside US Embassy in China

An explosion has taken place outside the US Embassy in the Chinese capital of Beijing, injuring one person, Chinese police say.

Police confirmed that a blast had occurred outside the US Embassy in Beijing’s Chaoyang district — where there are a number of foreign embassies — on Thursday but said it had been caused by a suspected “firework device.”

Police said the blast wounded a 26-year-old male suspect and no one else.

Witnesses said there were seven to eight police vehicles near the Embassy, and the road next to the complex had been closed off.

The Embassy had earlier said that “a bomb” had exploded outside its perimeters and that police had responded, without elaborating.

The US Embassy in Beijing has heavy security measures, including a bulletproof glass wall, and is America’s third-largest diplomatic mission in the world, behind its embassies in Baghdad and Yerevan.

The ruling Communist Party newspaper Global Times had also said in a different report that security forces outside the US Embassy “took away a woman spraying gasoline on herself in a suspected attempt at self-immolation” at around 11 a.m. local time on Thursday.

The state-run outlet said in a subsequent post on Twitter that it was not “proven yet” that the self-immolation incident was connected to the “alleged explosion” near the Embassy, which it said occurred later.