China executes three for railway knife attack

(CNN)China has executed three men convicted of plotting a knife attack that killed 31 people at a railway station in the southwestern city of Kunming last year.

The Kunming City Intermediate People's Court said that Iskandar Ehet, Turgun Tohtunyaz and Hasayn Muhammad were put to death Tuesday.

It said they had committed intentional homicide, led a terrorist group and organized the mass knifing, which also wounded 141 people.

The names of those executed suggested they were Uyghur, a mainly Muslim ethnic group from Xinjiang, northwest China. Authorities had blamed terrorists from the region for the attack.

The train station attack shook the country and state media labeled it "China's 9/11."

Dressed in black and wielding long knives and machetes, several assailants stormed the station on March 1, 2014 seemingly hacking at anyone in sight.

Authorities said police shot four perpetrators dead on the scene and captured another.

It was the deadliest of a recent spate of violent incidents that have been blamed on Uyghurs.