<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR>Blasts and clash kill 5 in China's tense far west <!--10 min-->
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Chinese authorities announced step up controls on religious figures and potential threats to guard against attacks following the blast that killed 16 police. -- PHOTO: AFP
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<!-- START OF : div id="storytext"-->BEIJING - FIVE people were killed in China's tense far west in a clash involving homemade bombs and a shoot out on Sunday, underscoring tension there two days into the Olympics and less than a week after a blast killed 16 police.
The blasts in Kuqa, a town in the south of the restive region of Xinjiang more than 3,000 km from Games host Beijing, occurred in the early hours, Xinhua news agency quoted witnesses as saying.
'The lawbreakers drove a taxi to the local public security office, industry and business administration and other sites and tossed homemade explosives, destroying two police vehicles,' said one Xinhua report.
Five attackers were shot dead by police, and two police and a security guard were injured, it said.
A separate English-language Xinhua report said two people 'were known to have been killed in a series of explosions' in Kuqa, but was unclear whether those deaths were in addition to the five attackers killed.
'The circumstances are still unclear...Our leaders haven't determined the nature of the incident yet,' said an official in the Kuqa Communist Party Committee office. He refused to give his name. 'It looks like separatist forces,' he said when asked.
Chinese officials have said militants seeking an independent 'East Turkestan' homeland for Xinjiang's Muslim Uighurs are among the top security threats to the Beijing Olympics, which started on Friday.
Asked about the attack, Mr Wang Wei, secretary-general of the Beijing Organising Committee for the Olympic Games, said East Turkestan separatists had 'never ceased' their activities aimed at 'splitting the motherland'.
'Such activities will not be tolerated in any country,' he told a news conference in Beijing. 'They may want to use the platform of the Olympics to amplify the effects, but their main goal is to achieve separation.'
This was the second attack within a week aimed at Xinjiang security forces. An attack at a border police station in Xinjiang killed 16 police on Monday. Two Uighur suspects have been detained.
Many of Xinjiang's 8 million Uighurs chafe at controls on religion that China enforces and resent influxes of Han Chinese migrants and businesses. Uighurs now make up slightly less than half of its 20 million people, and most of the rest are Han.
Critics and exiled Uighurs say Beijing has exaggerated the threat of violence in Xinjiang and stirred discontent by stifling Uighur influence and luring Chinese migrants.
'China's policies of repression are making the situation more acute,' said Mr Dilxat Raxit, Stockholm-based spokesman for the exiled World Uyghur Congress. 'Beijing has never treated our pleas seriously. To the contrary, it has stepped up repression.'
Kuqa county, where the town of the same name lies, is an ethnically divided area of some 450,000 people that has seen unrest before. In 2001, the county police chief was killed in a clash with militants armed with guns and grenades, state media reported at the time. 'Kuqa is like a Chinese city built on an old Uighur oasis town,' said Mr Nicholas Bequelin, a researcher for the group Human Rights Watch who has visited Xinjiang. 'The situation was very tense in the countryside there because of an influx of Han settlers given cheap land and water.' -- REUTERS
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Chinese authorities announced step up controls on religious figures and potential threats to guard against attacks following the blast that killed 16 police. -- PHOTO: AFP
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<!-- START OF : div id="storytext"-->BEIJING - FIVE people were killed in China's tense far west in a clash involving homemade bombs and a shoot out on Sunday, underscoring tension there two days into the Olympics and less than a week after a blast killed 16 police.
The blasts in Kuqa, a town in the south of the restive region of Xinjiang more than 3,000 km from Games host Beijing, occurred in the early hours, Xinhua news agency quoted witnesses as saying.
'The lawbreakers drove a taxi to the local public security office, industry and business administration and other sites and tossed homemade explosives, destroying two police vehicles,' said one Xinhua report.
Five attackers were shot dead by police, and two police and a security guard were injured, it said.
A separate English-language Xinhua report said two people 'were known to have been killed in a series of explosions' in Kuqa, but was unclear whether those deaths were in addition to the five attackers killed.
'The circumstances are still unclear...Our leaders haven't determined the nature of the incident yet,' said an official in the Kuqa Communist Party Committee office. He refused to give his name. 'It looks like separatist forces,' he said when asked.
Chinese officials have said militants seeking an independent 'East Turkestan' homeland for Xinjiang's Muslim Uighurs are among the top security threats to the Beijing Olympics, which started on Friday.
Asked about the attack, Mr Wang Wei, secretary-general of the Beijing Organising Committee for the Olympic Games, said East Turkestan separatists had 'never ceased' their activities aimed at 'splitting the motherland'.
'Such activities will not be tolerated in any country,' he told a news conference in Beijing. 'They may want to use the platform of the Olympics to amplify the effects, but their main goal is to achieve separation.'
This was the second attack within a week aimed at Xinjiang security forces. An attack at a border police station in Xinjiang killed 16 police on Monday. Two Uighur suspects have been detained.
Many of Xinjiang's 8 million Uighurs chafe at controls on religion that China enforces and resent influxes of Han Chinese migrants and businesses. Uighurs now make up slightly less than half of its 20 million people, and most of the rest are Han.
Critics and exiled Uighurs say Beijing has exaggerated the threat of violence in Xinjiang and stirred discontent by stifling Uighur influence and luring Chinese migrants.
'China's policies of repression are making the situation more acute,' said Mr Dilxat Raxit, Stockholm-based spokesman for the exiled World Uyghur Congress. 'Beijing has never treated our pleas seriously. To the contrary, it has stepped up repression.'
Kuqa county, where the town of the same name lies, is an ethnically divided area of some 450,000 people that has seen unrest before. In 2001, the county police chief was killed in a clash with militants armed with guns and grenades, state media reported at the time. 'Kuqa is like a Chinese city built on an old Uighur oasis town,' said Mr Nicholas Bequelin, a researcher for the group Human Rights Watch who has visited Xinjiang. 'The situation was very tense in the countryside there because of an influx of Han settlers given cheap land and water.' -- REUTERS
