'I Have Never Seen So Many Ambulances'

Monday's twin bomb blasts at the Boston Marathon prompted a huge online response in China, even before Boston University graduate student Lu Lingzi was confirmed as one of the people who lost their lives. The event was tweeted live from the scene by Chinese property magnate Wang Shi, attracting comments and condolences from thousands of his followers on the Twitter-like service Sina Weibo. A Chinese national who gave only her surname Xu was also at the scene of the tragedy, and spoke to RFA's Mandarin service about what she experienced:

I suddenly heard one explosion, and then there were two, with perhaps 15 or 20 seconds between them. The sounds were very loud; about as loud as gunfire during a formal military salute. A crowd of police came running over, and, as I was leaving the area, I saw a woman sitting down. She had bandages wrapped around her legs, and there was blood all around on the ground, and blood on her socks.

At the medical tents near the exit, the ambulances were coming and going, one after another. They were bringing stretchers to pick up the people in the tent. It was endless. They just kept coming and coming. There was an endless stream of injured people being taken away. I have never seen so many ambulances in Boston. They just kept coming.

I felt that everyone was pretty panicky. They couldn't believe it. But the rescue workers were a little bit calmer than that.

This was an unimaginable event for Boston, because Boston is basically peaceful. Very peaceful. It seemed that something like this could never happen in Boston. But [these] explosions, they really shocked people.

Reported by Zi Jing for RFA's Mandarin service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.