Fifteen people, including 11 terrorists, were killed in a suicide attack today by Islamic militants in China's volatile Xinjiang province that coincided with a visit here by US Secretary of State John Kerry.
Terrorists, on motorbikes and in cars carrying gas cylinders, attacked a police team near the gate of a park at around 4 pm (local time) in Wushi County in the Aksu Prefecture of the province.
Eight terrorists were killed by police and three others died in suicide blasts during the attack this afternoon in the northwestern Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
The Tianshan web portal, run by the Xinjiang government, said that besides the 11 attackers, two policemen and two passersby were killed while one assailant was detained. Photos posted on the site showed a charred police van and jeep.
Police said the terrorists had an unknown number of liquefied natural gas (LNG) cylinders in their car which they had attempted to use as bombs.
The attack coincided with Kerry's visit to Beijing to hold talks with top Chinese leaders on a range of issues including human rights.
The province bordering Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) and Afghanistan has witnessed increasing confrontation between police and activists of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, (ETIM), an al-Qaeda-backed group fighting for the separation of Xinjiang from China.
Six terrorists were shot dead by police during an attack on a police station on January 24 in the county seat of Xinhe in the Aksu Prefecture.
Last year, Beijing too for the first time witnessed a "suicide attack" by three family members from Xinjiang at the Forbidden City here when they drove a car into crowds of tourists at the historic Tiananmen Square. All three along with a tourist were killed in the attack.
Some 190 terrorist attacks were recorded in Xinjiang in 2012, increasing by a significant margin from 2011, according to the regional public security department.
Xinjiang has for years witnessed tensions between the ethnic Muslim Uygurs and Han Chinese over alleged repression and increasing Han settlement in the province.
