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CHINESE STATE MEDIA has said that 37 civilians and 59 “terrorists” were killed in an attack earlier in the week in Xinjiang, home to China’s mainly Muslim Uighur minority.
The total toll makes the incident by far the bloodiest since rioting involving Uighurs and members of China’s Han majority killed around 200 people in the regional capital Urumqi in 2009.
Police had arrested 215 “terrorists” while 13 civilians were also wounded in Monday’s attack on a police station and government offices in Shache county, or Yarkand in the Uighur language, in Kashgar prefecture, according to the official Xinhua news agency.
Latest violent attack
It was the latest in a series of violent incidents over recent months in and connected with the vast resource-rich region, where rights groups accuse China’s government of cultural and religious repression they say fuels unrest.
News of the clash first emerged late on Tuesday when Xinhua reported that dozens of people had been killed or wounded by knife-wielding assailants.
In its report Sunday, Xinhua said that 35 of the dead civilians were Han Chinese while two were Uighurs.
“A gang armed with knives and axes attacked a police station and government offices,” it said, with some later moving on to another township, “attacking civilians and smashing vehicles as they passed”.
The gangsters also set roadblocks and stopped vehicles passing by, before slashing passengers indiscriminately and forcing civilians to join them in the terror attack.
Officers had confiscated knives from the scene as well as “banners that hailed holy war”.
The news agency cited the government as saying investigations showed the attack was “organised and premeditated”, and “in connection with the terrorist group East Turkestan Islamic Movement” (ETIM).
Information in Xinjiang, in China’s far west, is often difficult to verify independently, and many foreign analysts doubt ETIM’s capacities.
Dilxat Raxit, a spokesman for the exiled World Uyghur Congress (WUC), accused Beijing’s security forces of using submachine guns and sniper rifles, leading to “huge casualties”.
“China has distorted the incident and claimed terrorism in order to cover up the truth, which is that they opened fire to repress Uighurs,” he said in a statement emailed to AFP.
Beijing has blamed violent separatists from Xinjiang for a series of attacks which have grown in scale and sophistication over the last year and have spread outside the region.
Among the most shocking were a May assault on a market in Urumqi, where 39 people were killed, and a deadly rampage by knife-wielding assailants at a train station at Kunming in China’s southwest in March, which left 29 dead.
The violence has also included a fiery crash at Tiananmen Square, Beijing’s symbolic heart, in October, that killed two tourists and the three people in the vehicle, all from the same family.
On Friday, police in Xinjiang shot dead nine suspected terrorists and captured one, according to Xinhua.
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A bit heavy handed by the Chinese but Islamist radicals calling for Jihad are about the worst kind of people that exist in the world today.
It’s sharia law you need to worry about and there’s no mention of that in the article, neither is there for jihad
I like how the media mentions that they are “terrorists” only when a Muslim commits a crime. When anyone else commits a crime they are called a criminal.
This is discrimination at its finest.
Especially when terror target number 1 (as fox call it) America has 78% of domestic terror attacks are carried out by white males
Might want to have a look again there kev, “holy war” = jihad. Anyone calling for that is extremist in my view.
That would be information from the Chinese which is about as trustworthy as the Russians, the IDF, the white press secretary etc… all of which has been proven false on occasions. Until you have the facts you cannot make such blind assumptions.
In America,leaving a pipe with a wire sitcking out of it,outside an abortion clinic, is classified as terrorist attack 99.9% of these attacks result in no loss of life or even injury. Are you really trying to compare this type of attack to Islamic terrorism which results in the injury and death of thousands of people every year? If you are, then you are being intentionally disingenuous.
Also although this article does not mention Jihad, radical Chinese Uighirs have been calling for Jihad against the Chinese state. And the savagery and barbaric method of this attack, is testament to the fact that the call has been answered.
This must be awkward for you lot on the left. Do you condemn the Chinese for the repression a minority ethnic group or do you support them in their efforts to stamp out Muslim extremists. Unlike Tibet this one is not as clear cut. Hence there is very little commenting from the usual leftie brigade on this.
How about you forget about your childish left / right ideologies and take each situation independently with an open mind.
Mick if the word Israel was mentioned at any stage,the Leftists would be all over it like a rash.
You will never think outside your left right box will you
Have to agree with you Mick. There is also the other forgotten overlooked conflicts that the lefties came out shouting about. Now keeping very quiet as the jihad brigade are murdering and killing in horrific circumstances.
what’s that Muslims killing people ……never sher it’s the religion of peace
Muslims in China, i’m surprised the Yanks haven’t invaded yet?
They follow the oil
People forget how many crusades and deaths Christianity has caused
People forget how many deaths Islam’s expansion across Asia and North Africa caused.
Ah scipio let’s be honest here, nobody has as bloody and savage a history as Europeans. Three continents worth of people pretty much eradicated in the expansionist quest (North & South America and Australia). All history of course, but let’s at least be honest about our past.
ATF
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