Plane hijacked in China's Xinjiang region: report

BEIJING (Reuters) - An airplane was hijacked in China's restive region of Xinjiang, the official Xinhua news agency reported on Sunday.

The brief report on its English-language website (www.chinaview.cn) gave no other details, merely saying "Plane hijacked in Xinjiang."

In July, deadly riots and clashes between Muslim Uighurs and Han Chinese broke out in Xinjiang, and the latest incident may reignite tensions there.

In Xinjiang's worst ethnic violence in decades, Uighurs attacked Han Chinese in the regional capital of Urumqi on July 5 after police tried to break up a protest against the killing of Uighur workers in south China.

The official death toll from the riots stands at 197, most of them Han, the majority group in China's 1.3 billion population.

(Reporting by Chris Buckley; Editing by Robert Woodward)