Six people were shot dead by police and six others died in explosions set off by suspected terrorists in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, the regional news portal said yesterday.
Police opened fire to fight back attacks by a group of terrorist suspects when they were making arrests following two other explosions on Friday in the county seat of Xinhe in Aksu prefecture, said the website report said. Xinhe is an area located at China’s extreme west, on its border with Kyrgyzstan and populated predominantly by members of the Uygur minority.
Six suspects were shot and six others died in explosions they set off themselves, said the department. Police also arrested five people. One policeman was slightly injured. No casualties were reported among bystanders. Police also seized some explosive devices and other devices used to commit criminal acts.
The earlier two explosions occurred at 6:40pm on Friday. Shortly afterwards, police arrested three suspects. Later a suspect vehicle exploded while surrounded by police. Further investigations into the explosions are under way.
At least 91 people, including several policemen, have been killed in violence in Xinjiang since last April, according to local authorities.
Eleven people, believed to be members of a militant group of ethnic Uygurs, were killed in Kyrgyzstan after illegally crossing into the former Soviet republic from China, Kyrgyz border guards said on Friday. Items found on them showed that they belonged to an organization of Uygur separatists, said Raimberdi Duishenbiyev, acting head of Kyrgyz border guards.
After crossing the border in a mountainous area of northeast Kyrgyzstan on Thursday, the militants ran into a local hunter who killed two of them before being killed himself, he added. The attackers seized the hunter’s gun but were later blocked by border guards from a nearby frontier post. A special task force unit flown to the area by helicopter killed the remaining nine men who refused to surrender. The hunter’s gun appeared to be the only firearm held by the group, who slightly wounded a border guard.
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