Bomb attack kills 16 in China days before Games

KASHGAR, China (Reuters) - Chinese police said a bomb attack that killed 16 police in the western Xinjiang region on Monday was a "suspected terrorist" attack, four days before the Beijing Olympic Games, state media reported.

The Xinhua news agency said two assailants drove a truck towards exercising border police officers in Kashgar, home of many ethnic Uighurs resentful of Chinese control of the region.

"One of the attackers drove a tip lorry to hit a team of more than 70 policeman who were jogging to pass the Yiquan Hotel in a regular morning exercise at about 8:00 a.m. (8 p.m. EDT on Sunday)," said the English-language report.

"The other suspect threw an explosive towards the gate of the station. The driver then abandoned the lorry to throw explosive at the policemen" after veering into a roadside pole.

Sixteen police were killed and another 16 wounded. Police detained the two attackers on the spot, and identified them as two Uighur men aged 23 and 28. Police suspected it was a "terrorist attack" carried out using homemade explosive devices.

The street had been cleared, with a tarpaulin covering the front of the hotel the only sign of the morning's carnage.

But security men in camouflage fatigues and red armbands chased away a crowd who had come to inspect the site, and a Reuters witness saw police just meters away beating one man with batons and trying to drag another away.

"It's sad the police who died were all so young, but this is wrong that they don't want us to see," said one Han Chinese resident being shooed away by the menacing officials, who gave only his surname, Zhang.

"But I don't think this is a terrorist attack, so I'm not scared."

Security forces also chased two Reuters reporters down the street, waving batons, and slammed a camera into the face of a bystander trying to take pictures.

But the rest of the city was calm, with no visible signs of extra security on streets full of both Uighur and Chinese residents. Locals said there were no reports of the attack on local media, though news had traveled fast by word of mouth.

ARM BLOWN OFF

Xinjiang's largely Muslim Uighurs have been a focus of China's strict nationwide security in the run-up to the Games. Officials have said militants seeking an independent "East Turkestan" homeland are among the biggest threats.

Many Uighurs resent Chinese controls on religion and the expanding ethnic Han Chinese presence in Xinjiang, a region rich in energy and mineral resources.

Some Uighur groups seek an independent homeland, and China has said militants have forged ties with al Qaeda, Hizb ut-Tahrir and other Islamist groups.

Xinhua earlier said the bombers had also "hacked the policemen with knives", but omitted that in a later report.

The driver was rushed to hospital after he "blew up" one of his arms igniting explosive, it said. Surgeons had amputated his arm to save his life.

Police had recovered "10 homemade explosives", a homemade hand gun and four knives from the vehicle.

Police "got clues suggesting that the 'East Turkestan Islamic Movement' planned to make terrorist attacks during August 1-8, just ahead of the opening of the Olympic Games in Beijing," Xinhua said.

Kashgar is a heavily Muslim market city of some 200,000 in Xinjiang's south, close to China's borders with Pakistan, Afghanistan and central Asian states. The Olympic relay torch passed through the city in June under intense security.

Officials there contacted by telephone gave no more details.

Nicholas Bequelin, a researcher for the monitoring group Human Rights Watch who has long studied Xinjiang, said the attack was "the most serious incident recorded in years".

"Ahead of the Olympics, it is a very powerful symbolic attack because security in Xinjiang is at an all-time high."

China has said it has foiled terrorist plots targeting the Olympics and in the first six months of the year police detained dozens of people in Xinjiang for plotting to sabotage the Games, according to state media.

Human rights critics and exiled Uighurs say Beijing has exaggerated the threat of violence in Xinjiang and stirred discontent by encouraging the migration of millions of Han Chinese into the region. Uighurs now make up slightly less than half of its 20 million people, according to official statistics.

(Additional reporting by Chris Buckley and Ian Ransom; writing by Ben Blanchard; editing by Andrew Roche)

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