Chinese police today shot dead eight terrorists who had launched a pre-dawn attack on them using knives and explosives in the volatile Xinjiang region, two weeks after a similar incident in the same region bordering PoK claimed 16 lives.
"Eight terrorists were shot dead and another one captured by police during a terrorist attack in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region," the state-run Xinhua news agency quoted local authorities as saying.
The nine terrorists attacked a police station wielding knives in Shache County in the Kashgar region. They also threw explosives and set police cars on fire.
Eight were shot dead at the scene. Another was caught by police, officials of the Communist Party Kashgar prefectural party committee said.
The case is under further investigation, the report said.
Resource-rich Xinjiang, home to home to some 9 million Uyghurs, has witnessed sporadic clashes.
Verifying reports from the region is difficult because the information flow out of Xinjiang is tightly controlled.
The government traditionally blames extremists for the violence, while Uyghur activists point to ethnic tensions and tight Chinese control as triggers for violence.
The last such incident took place on December 15 when a fierce clash between police and terrorists left at least 16 people, including two policemen, dead in the Kashgar region.
In November, state media reported nine civilians and two policemen were killed in an attack on a police station near Kashgar, located close to Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK).
In late October, five people were killed when a car ploughed into a crowd and then burst into flames in Beijing's iconic Tiananmen Square.
Beijing called the incident a terrorist attack inspired by Xinjiang-linked extremists. Three people who died inside the car were identified by police as Xinjiang Uyghurs.
The arrival of waves of the majority Han Chinese people over the decades has fueled tensions with the Uyghur minority group. Chinese authorities have cracked down heavily on violence involving Uyghurs, deepening resentment in the border province.
