21 Dead as Violence Erupts In Xinjiang, West China

There have been reports of a violent clash involving police officers and local officials which resulted in the deaths of at least 21 people, with 15 others injured.

According to a statement released by the Xinjiang government, three local officials alerted their superiors after they discovered a group of ‘several suspicious individuals’ with knives hiding in one house on Tuesday afternoon.

Unfortunately, the occupants of the house took them hostage before the Police rushed to the scene. Violence erupted, resulting in the deaths of six ‘gang members’ with 15 others.

Eight of the ‘gang members’ were captured, while 15 others that died in the ensuing violence were either police officers or social workers, comprising of 10 Uighurs, three Han and two Mongolians of ethnic minority living in Xinjiang.

According to Hou Hanmin, a spokesperson for the Xinjiang government, who spoke to CNN, some of the knives recovered by the authorities were more than a meter long, and that the arrested individuals under interrogation claimed to have watched videos ‘from overseas’ that exhibited violence and acts of terrorism.

She also said, ‘‘then they made those large, lethal knives and wanted to use them for jihad. They had been training in their own house for several months. They were affected by extremism and hoped to commit themselves to jihad.’’

According to Tianshan Net, a government-owned online news site, the fighting has been described as a ‘violent terror incident’. The clash only shows how chaotic the Xinjiang violence is, and the poor response of the authorities to such events.

 
West China has suffered much unrest. The worst of the violence occurred in Urumqi, July 2009, between Uighurs (predominantly Muslim ethnic Turks) and Han Chinese that left over 200 people dead and 1,700 injured.  The latest clash occurred in Bachu County, east of Kashgar.