Six killed in China’s Xinjiang after explosions: reports (Reuters)

BEIJING (Reuters) – Two men wielding knives attacked a truck driver and then a crowd of people following two explosions in China’s far west, killing six people before one attacker was killed and the other captured, government-run media reported Sunday.

The blasts and attack occurred late on Saturday in the city of Kashgar in the Xinjiang region near China’s border with Tajikistan, according to tianshannet.com, a Xinjiang government-run web, and the state-run news agency Xinhua.

One of the blasts was from a minivan while another occurred in a food market, Xinhua said.

Xinjiang is home to many Uighurs, a mostly Muslim Turkic-speaking people native to the region, many of whom resent the growing presence of majority Han Chinese who have moved there and some groups have campaigned for independence.

It was the second incident of serious violence in the region in two weeks.

Eighteen people including 14 “rioters” were killed in an attack on a police station in Xinjiang on July 18, according to the government. The dead included two policemen and two hostages in what Chinese authorities described as a terrorist attack.

That clash was the worst violence in about a year in Xinjiang.

Saturday’s attacks began with the two blasts, Xinhua said. Two men jumped into a truck waiting at a stoplight and stabbed to death the driver, Xinhua and tianshannet.com said.

The pair then escaped in the truck, striking several people as it drove off, according to Xinhua. Tianshannet.com gave a somewhat different version, saying the attackers drove the truck into a crowd, left the truck and started attacking people, killing six.

The crowd retaliated, beating one of the attackers to death and capturing the other, according to the account, which did not further identify the attackers.

Twenty-eight people were hospitalised, it said.

There were no other immediate details. The reports did not say if authorities suspect there is any link to a Uighur separatist movement or to the July 18 attack.

Xinjiang is strategically significant because it is adjacent to Pakistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, and it has oil, gas and coal deposits.

(Reporting by Terril Yue Jones; Editing by Robert Birsel)

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