China has detained five suspected Islamist militants after a vehicle burst into flames on Beijing's Tiananmen Square in what police called a terrorist attack.
The SUV involved in Monday's incident in which five people were killed was driven by a man named Usmen Hasan, police said.
The name would suggest he was an ethnic Uighur, a group of Muslims from the far western region of Xinjiang.
The man's wife and mother were with him in the car, along with devices filled with gasoline, knives and a flag with "religious extremist content" written on it, police said on their official microblog.
The vehicle crashed into pedestrians in the square, which has drawn occasional protests since 1989 pro-democracy demonstrations were suppressed by the military.
Sources earlier said it was a suspected suicide attack.
"Police have identified Monday's incident at Tiananmen Square as a violent terrorist attack which was carefully planned, organised and premeditated," police said, adding the three people in the vehicle died after they set the gasoline on fire.
The other two people killed were tourists. At least 38 people were injured.
Five people connected with the incident were caught just ten hours after the attack, with help from the Xinjiang government, the police added.
Police said they had seized Islamist militant flags and knives from where they were staying.
