Plane in Afghanistan after China reports bomb threat

BEIJING (Reuters) - An Afghan airplane flying to Xinjiang region in restive western China was "suspected of being threatened by a bomb" and landed back in Afghanistan after Xinjiang authorities said it could not land, Xinhua news agency reported on Sunday.

Xinhua had earlier reported that the plane had been hijacked but the latest report made no mention of any attackers onboard.

A spokesman for the Afghan embassy in Beijing, who said he had spoken to the aircraft's operators, told Reuters that they were not told by Chinese authorities of the bomb threat and had merely been ordered to turn back the flight.

The plane had landed in Kandahar, Xinhua said, quoting diplomatic sources.

In July, 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 Angus MacSwan)