15 dead after attackers hack bystanders with knives on Xinjiang street

[WildestDreams]

15 dead after attackers hack bystanders with knives on Xinjiang street

Four civilians killed and 11 'terrorists' shot dead in Shache county violence, reports say

PUBLISHED : Sunday, 30 November, 2014, 5:28am
UPDATED : Sunday, 30 November, 2014, 9:55am

Andrea Chen [email protected]

Police officers stand guard in Xinjiang. The region has seen a series of attacks in recent months. Photo: AP

At least four innocent people were killed and another 14 injured when a group of knife-wielding assailants hacked bystanders and threw explosives into a crowd on a busy street in restive Xinjiang's Shache county on Friday, state media reported yesterday.

Eleven attackers, armed with explosives, knives and axes, were shot dead at the scene by patrolling officers, according to Xinhua.

All the injured were taken to hospital, and police continued to investigate the case, which had been deemed a terrorist attack, the report said.

The police gave no details on the ethnicity of the attackers or the total number involved. Neither did they say whether any officers were injured. The attack took place at 11.30am in Shache, or Yarkand, a county administered by Kashgar .

Shache is one of the most populous counties in Xinjiang, home to more than 860,000 people, 96 per cent of whom are from ethnic minorities, according to a 2012 report by a newspaper under the Ministry of Education.

The region has seen a series of attacks in recent months. In July, 37 civilians and 59 terrorists were killed and another 13 civilians wounded in a deadly attack on a police station and government offices in Shache, state media said. That incident was reportedly the bloodiest in Xinjiang since a riot involving both Han and Uygurs left about 200 people dead in Urumqi in 2009.

Two days after the July attack, Jume Tahir, the government-appointed chief imam of the country's biggest mosque in Kashgar, was hacked to death after leading morning prayers.

Beijing has blamed both attacks on Xinjiang separatists, whom the authorities said received terrorism training. Rights groups and exiled Uygurs dispute the terrorism label and argue the violence is the result of repression by the authorities.

Two teenagers were sentenced to death over the killing of the imam, and a third man was given life imprisonment in September. More than 20 people responsible for the attack in July were sentenced to death by a Kashgar court in October.