VW Passat Used in Beijing US Embassy Ram Raid

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Obviously these gents should have used the much more robust VW Santana, they might have gotten further than the front gate:

From AP

BEIJING (AP) — Three Chinese men in a car rammed a gate at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing in late January, but little damage was caused and the incident is being investigated, an Embassy spokesman said Friday.

Chinese police have released few details about the ramming, Richard Buangan said. The Embassy did not report the incident at the time; Buangan was responding to queries from The Associated Press, which learned of the incident on Friday.

The three men were immediately taken into police custody and the Embassy’s security officers were seeking more information, Buangan said. Their identities are unknown to the Embassy, he said.

Beijing police and China’s Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to questions about the incident that they asked to be faxed to them.

The incident occurred at around 3:00 p.m. on Jan. 28, during China’s weeklong Lunar New Year holiday. Buangan said the car involved was a Volkswagen Passat and the gate, which was a staff entrance to the complex, was bent inward and cannot now be opened.

Workers on Friday were repairing the gate with drills and welding torches.

Diplomats moved into the new U.S. Embassy in Beijing just last year. The massive complex is the second largest U.S. Embassy in the world after the one in Baghdad and sprawls over an entire city block on Beijing’s eastern Chaoyang district.

China has blamed al-Qaida-linked terror cells for attacks in the country’s far west, but the capital has been largely peaceful and sentiment among Chinese toward the U.S. has been largely neutral in recent years.