16 police dead on Uyghuristan-China's border
-Restive Muslim province on edge 4 days ahead of Games
Dan Martin, AFP
-Restive Muslim province on edge 4 days ahead of Games
Dan Martin, AFP
Published: Monday, August 04, 2008
URUMQI, China - At least 16 policemen in China's Muslim-majority Uyghurs northwest were killed Monday in a suspected terrorist attack, state media said, raising security fears four days before the Beijing Olympics.
In one of the deadliest reported assaults in China in years, two men aimed a lorry at police officers jogging near their barracks in Kashgar, a city in the Easturkistan/Uyghuristan region, the Xinhua news agency said.
After the lorry hit a roadside pole, the two men got out and threw home-made explosives at the exercising police officers, moving in to hack at them with knives, the agency reported.
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A man is carried away by security for unknown reasons at the airport in Urumqi, the capital of China's far northwestern, mainly Muslim Uyghur In Eastturkistan/Uyghuristan region Aug. 4. China's Olympic run-up stuttered again as it was reported that terrorists killed 16 policemen in Eastturkistan's famed Silk Road city of Kashgar.
It said 16 police were killed on the spot and two died from their wounds on the way to hospital, while 16 others were injured.
Both attackers were arrested, one of them with a leg injury sustained during the raid, according to the news agency. Xinhua said debris from five explosives was found near the barracks.
"We were awakened . . . by two very loud bangs," said Siegfried Maurer, a German who was staying with his family at the Barony Hotel close to the attack in the northwest of the city.
"We were still sleeping but they were loud enough to wake us up."
Police in the city, which is close to the Tajikistan border and around 4,000 kilometres from Beijing, immediately imposed a lockdown in the surrounding areas.
"There were about 20 police on our floor alone. They came into our rooms and checked our cameras to see if we had taken any pictures of the incident," Maurer said, adding he was not allowed to leave for four hours.
The incident, a suspected terrorist attack according to Xinhua, threw a shadow over the Olympic countdown, after government warnings that members of Eastturkistan's Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking people, were planning to wreck the Games.
Dilxat Raxit, a Sweden-based spokesman for the World Uighur Congress, said anger was rising among the Uighurs about a pre-Olympic crackdown involving numerous arrests, but he could not confirm if Uighurs carried out the attack.
"The police and soldiers just arrest them without any rules," he told AFP.
Beijing Olympic organisers said it did not know yet if there was a direct connection to the showpiece sporting event, which begins on Friday.
In line with the flow of information in China surrounding security issues, reports were released only through official channels, while local authorities denied any knowledge of the event.
"Everything has returned to normal," an official with the Kashgar People's Armed Police said by telephone. He declined any other comment.
Timothy O'Rourke, an American, arrived at the scene of the attack about five hours afterwards, when everything had been cleared up but broken windows were evidence of the morning violence.
"It looks like they are trying to pretend it didn't happen. There is water all over the street, it looks like they have hosed it down," he told AFP by telephone.
China has said repeatedly that a major terrorist threat emanates from Uyghuristan/Xinjiang. It has deployed more than 100,000 security personnel to provide security for the Games, which run from August 8 to 24.
China's state media carries only sporadic reports about violence in Uyghuristan, making it difficult to determine the extent of the terrorist threat in the region.
But it was thought to be one of the deadliest such attacks ever reported in Uyghuristan.
"If 16 people died, I would think that this is the highest casualty ever reported for an incident," said Nicholas Bequelin, a researcher with Human Rights Watch and an expert on Uyghuristan.
Uyghuristan, a vast area that borders Central Asia, has about 10 million Uighurs, and many are unhappy with what they say has been decades of repressive Communist Chinese rule.
Two short-lived East Turkestan republics emerged in Uyghuristan in the 1930s and 1940s, at a time when central government control in China was weakened by civil war and Japanese invasion.
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