China says two Uighurs behind Xinjiang police attack
Posted: 05 August 2008 0522 hrs

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BEIJING: Two men who carried out an attack in northwest China's Xinjiang region on Monday, killing at least 16 police officers, were members of the Muslim Uighur ethnic group, state media reported.

The two suspected of killing and assaulting police in the border city of Kashgar were aged 28 and 33, Xinhua news agency said, adding one of them lost an arm to a home-made explosive in the attack.

The two were arrested immediately after the incident, Xinhua said, which happened four days before the start of the Beijing Olympics.

Xinjiang, a vast area that borders Central Asia, has about 8.3 million Uighurs, many of who are unhappy with what they say has been decades of repressive Communist Chinese rule.

Two short-lived East Turkestan republics emerged in Xinjiang in the 1930s and 1940s, at a time when central government control in China was weakened by civil war and Japanese invasion. - AFP/de