Three Han Chinese officials were murdered in Xinjiang as President Xi Jinping visited the restive region, home to mainly-Muslim Uighurs, a report and online postings said.
The trio were killed late last month while on a fishing trip in Kargilik county in Kashgar prefecture, US-funded Radio Free Asia (RFA) said yesterday, quoting local sources.
"Two of the men had their throats cut and were dumped into the lake, while the third one was stabbed in 31 places before he was also pushed into the lake," RFA quoted Enver Tursun, deputy chief of the police station in Janggilieski, as saying.
RFA's Chinese-language report attributed the quote to information received by its Uighur service.
Xinjiang, in China's far west, is periodically hit by unrest, which Chinese authorities blame on separatists from the area. Rights groups say tensions are driven mainly by cultural oppression, intrusive security measures, and immigration by Han, China's ethnic majority.
All three victims transferred to Xinjiang two years ago and were senior county level officials, one heading a bank and the other two working in the telecommunication department, RFA said.
Xi was in Kashgar on the same day -- the start of his four-day trip to the region -- visiting armed police units and stressing the "gravity and complexity" of anti-terrorism situation in the area, according to a previous report by the official Xinhua news agency.
On the last day of Xi's trip, assailants using knives and explosive devices struck at a rail station in Xinjiang's capital Urumqi, leaving three dead -- including two attackers -- and 79 wounded.
The Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP), a militant Islamist group, released a video online showing the construction of a briefcase bomb allegedly used in the attack, the US-based SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors extremist organisations, said Tuesday.
Asked about the video, foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said it "once again confirms what China has said previously, that currently there are some extremist violent terrorist groups trying... To carry out violent terrorist incidents in Xinjiang and other parts of China".
