Grenade attack kills 16 in China ahead of Games

BEIJING (Reuters) - A police station in China's restive Xinjiang region was attacked on Monday morning, four days before the Beijing Olympics begin, killing 16 officers and wounding 12, state media reported.

"Rioters drove two vehicles to break into the border patrol armed police division" near Kashgar and threw two grenades, Xinhua reported.

The brief report did not describe the attackers. But the Xinjiang region in the far northwest has been at the heart of China's security fears leading up the Olympics, which begin in four days.

Xinjiang is home to a large Uighur Muslim population, many of them discontent under strict Chinese rule. Some Uighur groups are campaigning for an independent homeland for their Turkic-speaking people.

Kashgar in Xinjiang's south is dominated by Uighurs, many of them pious Muslims.

China says it has foiled terror plots targeting this month's Beijing Olympics and in the first six months of the year police detained 82 people in Xinjiang for plotting to sabotage the Games, according to state media.

Beijing has given mixed signals on the terror threat from Xinjiang.

It has accused militant Uighurs of working with al Qaeda to bring about an independent state called East Turkestan, but it denied claims by a group calling itself the Turkistan Islamic Party that it was responsible for a series of bus bombings around the country.

Senior Colonel Tian Yixiang, China's top military officer in charge of Olympics security, said on Friday "East Turkestan terrorist groups" were the greatest threat to Games security, with lesser threats coming from Tibetan separatists and the exiled spiritual group, the Falun Gong.

(Reporting by Chris Buckley; Editing by Nick Macfie)