BEIJING: Twenty-one people, including police officers and social workers, were killed in violent clashes in China’s ethnically divided western region of Xinjiang, officials said yesterday.
Gun fights broke out in Barchuk county in the west of the province after police went to search the home of locals suspected of possessing illegal knives, a report on Tianshan Net, a government-run news website, said.
Foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said 15 police and social workers were killed in the violence, which occurred Tuesday — among them 10 from China’s mostly Muslim Uighur ethnic minority, who live mainly in Xinjiang. Xinjiang is home to around nine million ethnic Uighurs, many of whom complain of religious and cultural repression by Chinese authorities. The region is regularly hit by unrest.
Officials and state media blame the unrest on “terrorists” but some experts say the government has produced little evidence of an organised terrorist threat, adding the violence stems more from long-standing local resentment.
AFP
