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KASHGAR, China - Chinese authorities moved Tuesday to keep a lid on further information about a deadly assault on police in Kashgar, as a quiet tension gripped this heavily Muslim city a day after the attack.
At the hotel directly across from the site of the raid, which left 16 police dead, guests were told the Internet had been shut off -- not only in the hotel, but the whole city -- on police orders.
The 16 police were killed in the city in northwest China's Xinjiang region on Monday in a suspected terrorist attack, state media said, raising security fears just days before the Beijing Olympics.
In one of the deadliest reported assaults in China in years, a lorry was aimed at 70 police officers jogging near their barracks, the Xinhua news agency said.One attacker threw home-made explosives at the police, the report said.
It said the two attackers, aged 28 and 33, were arrested immediately, and identified the men as members of the Muslim ethnic Uighur group.
Authorities seemed intent Tuesday on preventing anything beyond the official version of events from getting out.
Police entered an AFP photographer's hotel room and forced him to delete photos he had taken of the scene.
Plainclothes police followed journalists as they moved around the city.
However, there was no obvious increased police presence in the city as people went about their business in Kashgar's main commercial district.
But few were willing to speak to reporters about what happened for fear of retribution from authorities.
A Uighur street cleaner who sweeps sidewalks in the area where the attack took place refused to talk about what he saw.
"It's in the reports, you can read about it in the media reports," he said, refusing to give his name.
"I don't want to talk about this anymore."
The incident cast a pall over the Olympic countdown, after government warnings that members of Xinjiang's Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking people, were planning to wreck the Games.
Beijing Olympic organisers said they did not know yet if there was a direct connection to the showpiece sporting event, which begins on Friday.
But China has said repeatedly that a major terrorist threat emanates from Xinjiang and that militants from the region were planning to stage attacks on the Games. - AFP/vm
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