The detonation of a bomb this afternoon outside the US Embassy in Beijing was understandably the topic of feverish social media activity, rapidly dominating WeChat groups. Many people in the area posted photos and video in the immediate aftermath of the incident. And predictably, the authorities moved quickly to contain comment and speculation — though certainly with limited success. As one user remarked: “WeChat groups are swamped!”

Below we have a selection of Weibo posts about the explosion that were deleted from the platform. We have arranged them in order of appearance, the first happening at 1:30PM Beijing time, 20 minutes or so after the explosion.

A search on Weibo for “embassy” (大使馆) now turns up an array of official responses to the explosion, including information from the official Weibo account of the Beijing police, and the response from China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs as reported by the Global Times. Said MOFA spokesman Geng Shuang (耿爽): “I want to say that this incident which happened at Tianze Road and Anjialou Road is an isolated security incident, and the Chinese police have already swiftly and appropriately dealt with it.”

The bomb was reportedly detonated by a single attacker, who has been identified as a 26-year-old man from Inner Mongolia surnamed Jiang. Other than the attacker, no one was injured in the attack.

If you want to understand how sensitive the sharing of eyewitness material can be in China, definitely watch this thread from AFP correspondent Becky Davis.