HONG KONG — A group of assailants wielding knives stormed into a railway station in southwestern China on Saturday, slashing employees and commuters and leaving at least 29 people dead and 130 wounded, according to Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency. The local government indicated that the attackers were Uighur separatists seeking an independent homeland in the Xinjiang region in China’s far west.

The attack, in Yunnan Province, was far from Xinjiang, and if carried out by members of the largely Muslim Uighur minority could imply that the volatile tensions between them and the government might be spilling beyond that restive region.

The violence erupted about 9 p.m. in the city of Kunming, when the assailants, all wearing similar clothing, entered the square in front of the station as well as a ticket sales hall, according to the official Yunnan news service.

“According to eyewitnesses, the group of males held knives and all wore the same black clothing,” said the China News Service, another state-run news agency. “They slashed at whoever they saw, and at the scene there were many people injured.” Photographs circulated by Chinese news websites, which they said were taken after the attack, showed men and women sprawled and bleeding.