Attackers in China's
restive Xinjiang region have crashed two cars into shoppers at a market,
killing 31 people, Chinese media reports say.
The Ministry of Public Security called it a "violent terrorist incident".
Xinjiang, which is home to the Muslim Uighur minority, has seen a spate of attacks in the past year.
Information about incidents in the region, where ethnic tensions between Uighurs and Han Chinese continue, is tightly controlled.
'Multiple explosions'
Pictures on Weibo microblogs - China's equivalent of Twitter - appeared to show Thursday's attack taking place at one end of a busy market street lined with vegetable stalls.
One of the two vehicles exploded.
"The air was full of the smell of gunpowder and the sound of sobbing," one witness told the Reuters news agency. "There were simply too many (casualties), elderly people who were at the morning market."
A local shopkeeper told the Associated Press he heard "four or five explosions" and saw "three or four people lying on the ground".
"Witnesses said two cross-country vehicles driving from north to south ploughed into people in the market at 07:50. Explosives were thrown out of the vehicles," the Xinhua report said.
The injured were taken to several hospitals, Xinhua said.
The World Uyghur Congress said the authorities in the Chinese capital Beijing should not increase the crackdown in Xinjiang.
A spokesman told the BBC the violent incidents were a direct result of Beijing's policies in the region.
Separately, new security measures have been announced for key areas of Beijing.
Uighurs and Xinjiang
- Uighurs are ethnically Turkic Muslims
- They make up about 45% of the region's population; 40% are Han Chinese
- China re-established control in 1949 after crushing short-lived state of East Turkestan
- Since then, there has been large-scale immigration of Han Chinese
- Uighurs fear erosion of their traditional culture
No comments:
Post a Comment