Xinjiang riot toll hits 156 as unrest spreads

By Chris Buckley

URUMQI, China (Reuters) - Chinese police dispersed 200 people gathering outside a mosque in the Silk Road city of Kashgar, the day after ethnic riots killed 156 in the capital of the Muslim Xinjiang region, state media said on Tuesday.

Calm had settled over Urumqi, capital of western Xinjiang region, after 20,000 police, troops and firefighters reclaimed the streets from rioters who burned and smashed vehicles and shops, and clashed with security forces over Sunday night.

Over 700 people had been detained, the official Xinhua news agency reported, although local residents told Reuters police were making indiscriminate sweeps of Uighur areas.

But despite heightened security some unrest appeared to be spreading in the volatile region, where long-standing ethnic tensions periodically erupt into bloodshed.

Police dispersed around 200 people "trying to gather" at the Id Kah mosque in the center of Kashgar city on Monday evening, the day after the Urumqi rioting, Xinhua said. Kashgar is in the far west of Xinjiang.

The report did not say if police used force, but said checkpoints had been set up at crossroads between Kashgar airport and downtown.

Police also had "clues" about efforts to organize unrest in Aksu city and Yili prefecture, the latter a border region that was racked by unrest in the late 1990s, Xinhua said.

Along with Tibet, Xinjiang is one of the most politically sensitive regions in China and in both places the government has sought to maintain its grip by controlling religious and cultural life while promising economic growth and prosperity.

But minorities have long complained that Han Chinese reap most of the benefits from official investment and subsidies, while making locals feel like outsiders in their own homes.

Almost half of Xinjiang's 20 million people are Uighurs, while the population of Urumqi, which lies 3,270 km (2,050 miles) west of Beijing, is mostly Han Chinese.

Chinese officials have already blamed the unrest on separatist groups abroad, who it says want to create an independent homeland for the Muslim Uighur minority.

A Xinjiang public security spokesman told Xinhua that people outside China used telephones to "direct mobs in Xinjiang to stage the violence," and said calls for protests were posted Saturday evening on Internet forums by sympathizers.

Last year, Beijing also blamed unrest across Tibetan areas on a "clique" led by the exiled Dalai Lama.

But exile groups deny organizing the violence and say it was an outpouring of pent-up anger over government policies and Han Chinese economic dominance.

In Washington, the White House said it was concerned about the deaths but it would be premature to speculate on the circumstances. "We call on all in Xinjiang to exercise restraint," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.