Update | 'My mother tripped and an attacker thrust a knife in her throat': Witnesses tell of Kunming attack horror

Unable to pay for a budget hotel, a Yunnan couple decided instead to pass the hours until their train departed by staying inside Kunming railway station on Saturday.

It was about 9pm when Xiong Wenguang, a 59-year-old migrant worker from Chuxiong county, saw a knife-wielding man rush towards them and pushed his wife out of the way, Xinhua reported. His quick thinking saved her life, but Xiong was not so lucky. He was one of the 29 killed.

"We were planning to take a morning train on Sunday to Zhejiang for work. The tickets are still with my husband," Chen Guizhen, 50, told Xinhua.

Witnesses said the attackers included both men and women. They were dressed in black and used long knives to stab and slash passengers at random, among them children and the elderly.

One witness told the he was in a waiting room when the violence erupted. "Six or seven men in black with knives rushed at us, stabbing everyone in front of them," he said.

His friend tried to shield his young daughter from the killers.