UPDATE 5-Blasts kill two in China's restive Xinjiang -Xinhua
(Adds details of injured suspects, background of unrest)
By Chris Buckley
BEIJING, Aug 10 (Reuters) - A series of blasts killed at least two people in China's restive far northwest Xinjiang on Sunday, underscoring volatile tensions there two days into the Olympics and less than a week after a blast killed 16 police.
The blasts in central Kuqa, a major town in southern Xinjiang more than 3,000 km (1,860 miles) from Beijing, occurred before dawn, Xinhua news agency quoted witnesses as saying.
"Casualties of the incident may still rise, Xinhua reported, citing witnesses who "saw flashes of fire and heard sporadic gunshots after the explosions".
Four or five suspects were killed or injured in the blasts, Xinhua said, raising the possibility that the two dead were perpetrators.
No group has claimed responsibility or been blamed for the blasts, but Chinese officials have said militants seeking an independent homeland for Xinjiang's largely Muslim Uighurs are one of the top security threats to the Beijing Olympics, which started on Friday.
"With these special circumstances and the special background of the eve of the Beijing Olympic Games, hostile forces at home and abroad will surely act like cornered mad dogs and step up their terror and sabotage activities," said the governor of Xinjiang, Nuer Baikeli, in the Xinjiang Daily on Friday.
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 the strict controls on religion that China enforces and resent influxes of Han Chinese migrant workers and businesses. Uighurs now make up slightly less than half of its 20 million people, and most of the rest are Han Chinese.
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.
Kuqa county, where the town of the same name lies, is an ethnically mixed area with a population of some 450,000 that has seen unrest. In 2001, the police chief of Kuqa was killed in what authorities called a separatist assassination.
In April, Xinjiang's hardline Communist Party chief, Wang Lequan, visited Kuqa and told officials "stability comes before all else", according to a report on the Kuqa government website (www.xjkc.gov.cn).
"Always keep a tight grip on protecting stability and fighting the sources of separatism," said Wang. (Editing by Nick Macfie)
