Chinese officials have captured several suspects in connection with Monday's deadly car crash in Tiananmen Square, state media report.
Police have described the incident as a "terror attack" for the first time, state broadcaster CCTV said.
Police had been looking for at least eight people, mostly from the restive Xinjiang region, earlier reports said.
The incident, in which a vehicle crashed into a crowd and burst into flames, killed five.
"The arrests were made 10 hours after the incident, which has now been identified as a terrorist attack," CCTV said on its verified microblog account.
- Uighurs are ethnically Turkic Muslims
- They make up about 45% of the region's population; 40% are Han Chinese
- China re-established control in 1949 after crushing short-lived state of East Turkestan
- Since then, there was large-scale immigration of Han Chinese
- Uighurs fear erosion of traditional culture
At least five suspects in relation to the incident have been detained, says state-run Xinhua news agency.
On Wednesday, a number of news agency reports said a police notice was being circulated among hotels in Beijing, asking information about eight suspects.
Seven have names typical of the predominantly Muslim Uighur ethnic group from the far-western region of Xinjiang and the other, although seemingly from China's majority Han ethnicity, has an address in Xinjiang, reports say.
Xinhua said that of the five people who died on Monday, three people died inside the car. The three in the vehicle include a man, his wife and his mother in law, police said on Wednesday.
A tourist from the Philippines and a tourist from Guangdong province were also killed. Another 38 people were injured, including three tourists from the Philippines and one from Japan.
"We thought the jeep was heading for us, and my mother and I had no way to run from it. So we didn't move," said eyewitness Wang Dake, who was sent to hospital with shock and a knee injury.
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Police had named two suspects
"I thought that if the car was going to hit us, then we would die right there. But it hit the marble railing and didn't hit us," he added.
An unnamed tourist from Zhejiang province told China's state-controlled Global Times: "The vehicle ran very fast. I could hear people screaming all the way while the vehicle ploughed through the crowds."
Police cars were chasing the car before it crashed, she added.
Police shut down the scene of the incident - at the north end of the square at an entrance to the Forbidden City - shortly after it occurred, temporarily closing a subway station and a road.
A BBC crew attempting to record footage at the location were briefly detained, while on Chinese social media some pictures of the scene appeared to be quickly deleted and comments were heavily censored.
Xinjiang is home to the minority Muslim Uighur group, some of whom complain of cultural and religious repression under Beijing's rule. There have been sporadic outbreaks of violence in Xinjiang, including in both Pishan and Shanshan counties. China says it grants the Uighurs wide-ranging freedoms.
In June, riots in Xingjian's Turpan prefecture, which is in Shanshan county, killed 27 people. State media said police opened fire after a mob armed with knives attacked police stations and a local government building.
In April another incident in the city of Kashgar left 21 people dead. The government said the violence was linked to terrorist activity, but local people told the BBC it involved a local family who had a longstanding dispute with officials over religious freedom.
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