Xinjiang Terror Attack 29 July 2014

Dozens of people were killed and injured in a "terrorist attack" in China's far western Xinjiang region, home to the mainly Muslim Uighur minority, state media reported Tuesday.

A knife-wielding gang attacked a police station and government offices in Shache county early Monday, the official Xinhua news agency said citing local police, and "dozens of Uighur and Han civilians were killed or injured".

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BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese police shot dead dozens of knife-wielding attackers on Monday morning after they staged assaults on two towns in the western region of Xinjiang, the official Xinhua news agency said on Tuesday.

"Police officers at the scene shot dead dozens of members of the mob," the brief report said.

An initial investigation showed that it was an "organised and premeditated terrorist attack", Xinhua added.

The dead and injured include not just Uighurs but members of China's majority Han Chinese population, the report said.

Shache, also known by its Uighur name of Yarkant, is located in Xinjiang's heavily Uighur southwestern part, close to the borders of Tajikistan, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Xinjiang, home to many Turkic-speaking Uighurs, has for years been beset by violence, which the government blames on Islamist militants or separatists who it says are bent on establishing an independent state called East Turkestan.

China says Uighur militants have based themselves in countries including Afghanistan and Pakistan in recent years, and this week China's special envoy for the Middle East said some had also likely been trained in Syria and Iraq.

It was not clear why the attack was only being reported on Tuesday, more than a day after it took place, though China's ruling Communist Party, which values stability above all else, had a habit of suppressing or delaying bad news.

(Reporting by Megha Rajagopalan and Chen Aizhu,; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

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bd popeye said:

More information..according to this article the attack took place yesterday.

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A large group of unknown assailants launched coordinated attacks on government and police buildings in China's far-western Xinjiang region on Monday, leaving dozens of people dead a day before the mostly Muslim area was set to celebrate the end of Ramadan, according to state media.

Attackers armed with knives undertook the assault in the town of Elixhu, with some later moving on to the town of Huangdi, smashing cars and killing civilians, the official Xinhua News Agency reported on Tuesday.

Xinhua said dozens of Han Chinese civilians were killed, 31 cars were smashed and another six cars were set on fire in what it called "an organized, premeditated and carefully planned terrorist attack of vile nature and tremendous violence."

The report didn't identify who the attackers were.

Xinjiang, which strategically abuts Central Asia and contains oil and natural-gas reserves, has long been riven by ethnic tensions between Han Chinese migrants and Xinjiang's Turkic-speaking, mostly Muslim Uighur ethnic group, with the latter often complaining of religious and economic discrimination at the hands of the former.

While China says it has raised living standards and educational levels for Uighurs, frustration with Chinese rule has fed a long-running separatist movement.

Elixhu and Huangdi are located north of the city of Yarkand in western Xinjiang, the site of multiple violent attacks on police in the past year.

Calls to the Yarkand government press offices and Yarkand police rang unanswered on Tuesday.


A photo of a purported internal report that was circulating online earlier on Tuesday said at least five locations fell under attack over the course of six hours on Monday morning and that the attackers at one point assaulted a column of 90 soldiers that was rushing to the scene. Troops killed 16 of the attackers, the document said.

A police officer answering the phone in Elixhu on Tuesday confirmed those details but said he couldn't provide any other information. He also confirmed reports that Internet service in Yarkand had been suspended in the wake of the attack. "Starting from yesterday, the Internet has been shut down. The Web, instant messaging—none of it works," he said.

The attack came a day before Eid al-Fitr, the festival that marks the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. The streets of Yarkand are typically filled with people during the festival, an employee of the city's Pengcheng Hotel said on Tuesday. "It's crazy, there's no one on the streets now," the employee said.

Police were working "all-out" to investigate the attack, Xinhua said, adding that social order had be restored.

Write to Josh Chin at [email protected]

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