China says 50 dead, 54 injured in Sunday terror attacks in restive Xinjiang
PUBLISHED : Friday, 26 September, 2014, 4:01am
UPDATED : Friday, 26 September, 2014, 11:37am
Agencies and staff reporters
Police patrol in Urumqi. Ethnic tensions in Xinjiang, home of the Muslim Uygur minority group, have killed more than 300 people in the past year and a half. Photo: AP
Xinjiang official media said that 50 people, including 40 suspected assailants, were killed in what the authorities called a terror attack over the weekend in the restive region.
Regional authorities had said earlier that multiple explosions on Sunday in Luntai county killed at least two people and injured many others.
Government-run news site Tianshan Net said on Thursday night the explosions killed two police officers, two police assistants and six bystanders. Fifty-four people were also injured in the attack, according to the site.
It said police took swift action and 40 attackers were either shot dead or took their own lives by setting off explosives. Another two suspects were captured.
The blasts hit a shop, an open-air market and two police stations around 5pm Sunday, it added. Police said it was an "organised and serious terrorist attack".
The report said the suspected leader of the assailants, identified as Mehmet Tursun, was shot dead. An initial investigation suggested the suspect, whose parents are civil servants, started developing "extreme religious" thoughts and begin recruiting members for his violent gang from his co-workers.
Earlier yesterday, Radio Free Asia, citing an anonymous local official and a hospital nurse, reported that 12 were killed and about 100 injured in the attacks.
An employee at the Red Cross Jimin Hospital in Luntai told the South China Morning Post yesterday that he helped pick up two injured people from the blast scene and sent them to hospital. He refused to disclose more.
Violent conflicts in Xinjiang, home of the Muslim Uygur minority group, have killed more than 300 people in the past year and a half.
Photos circulating online showed burning cars and police cordoning off a market. The updated report on Thursday night said some of the explosions occurred at a farmers’ market, a retail store and two police stations.
In the past week, Chinese authorities sent mixed signals of both intolerance and restraint in their approach to the increasing tensions over Xinjiang.
China’s highest court, its top prosecution office and the Ministry of Public Security released joint instructions on Sunday to their subordinate organs throughout the country on how to deal with cases of terrorism and religious extremism, describing such cases as a “grave threat” to national security and social stability.
The instructions, published on their websites, called on court officials, prosecutors and police to distinguish between the illegal acts of religious extremists and ordinary religious activities.
Officials should avoid discriminating against religions or ethnic minorities, interfering with citizens’ freedom to practice their religion and should respect the personal dignity of criminal suspects and defendants, according to the instructions.
However, a court in Urumqi, the region’s capital, on Tuesday sentenced the outspoken Uygur economics professor Ilham Tohti to life imprisonment on charges of advocating separatism for the region, sparking an international outcry over the harshest sentence the country has handed out handed out to a political dissident in a decade.
Associated Press, Agence France-Presse
