11 terrorists killed after attack in Xinjiang
Print Edition
Eight terrorists were killed by police and three others by their own suicide devices during a terrorist attack yesterday afternoon in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, police said.
Two civilians and two police officers were injured in the attack in Wushi County of Aksu Prefecture. One suspect was captured, police said.
Riding motorbikes and cars carrying LNG cylinders, the terrorists approached police officers near a park in Wushi County as they prepared to go on patrol around 4pm.
The terrorists were armed with explosive devices and knives, police said.
The web portal (www.ts.cn)run by the Xinjiang regional government said besides the 11 attackers killed, one assailant was detained. Photos posted on the site showed a charred police van and jeep.
The incident in Aksu Prefecture is the latest violence in the region.
Aksu, in the western Xinjiang near the border with Kyrgyzstan, was the scene of triple explosions in late January that killed at least three people, according to the website.
Police shot dead six terrorists soon afterward.
A Xinjiang police investigation described those blasts as “organized, premeditated terrorist attacks.”
Terrorist attacks totaled 190 in 2012, “increasing by a significant margin from 2011,” the regional government said.
The most serious recent incident took place in Turpan last June which left at least 35 people dead, according to police.
In October, three family members from Xinjiang died when they drove a car into crowds of tourists on Tian’anmen Square in Beijing, killing two people, before the vehicle burst into flames.
China’s top security official Meng Jianzhu said days later that the attackers had behind-the-scenes supporters belonging to the East Turkistan Islamic Movement based outside the country.
The United States and the United Nations have both categorized ETIM as a terrorist organization in 2002, following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York.
Last month, police arrested Ilham Tohti, a Uygur professor at Beijing-based Minzu University of China, for allegedly being involved in separatist activities.
Xinjiang, which covers a sixth of China’s territory, contains 30 percent of China’s onshore oil and gas deposits and 40 percent of its coal.
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