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Terrorism: Six hijackers were in for a surprise last week when they tried to commandeer a Tianjin Airlines jet bound for Urumqi, China. The passengers overpowered the gang, apparently killing two, and averted disaster. Seems "let's roll" translates very well into Chinese. In this case, the language was Uighur, the language of China's restive western state of Xinjiang, where an Islamic separatist movement with some links to al-Qaida has been active. Last Friday, in the city of Hotan, six ethnic Uighurs aged 26 to 30, rose from their seats after takeoff, three in front and three in back, and tried...

Hong Kong (CNN) -- A connection to Xinjiang, a restive autonomous region in northwestern China, has emerged in the investigation into the jeep that plowed into crowds in Tiananmen Square on Monday, killing five and injuring at least 40. The incident, which has been identified as a terrorist attack, was "carefully planned, organized and premeditated," police said Wednesday on their official Weibo account online. Tuesday, police circulated a notice to hotels in Beijing related to a "major incident" listing names that suggested suspects belonged to the Uyghur ethnic group that comes from Xinjiang. The region has a long history of...

BEIJING (AP) -- A tense minority region in China's far west erupted in violence Friday for the second time in three days, barely hours after the government called the earlier unrest a "terrorist attack" and raised the death toll to 35. State media gave few details in a brief dispatch about Friday's unrest, saying it was "a violent attack" that took place on a pedestrian street in Hotan, a city in Xinjiang, a region that has seen China's minority Uighurs clash with the ethnic Han majority. No details on casualties were released.

Recent Chinese diplomatic maneuvers in Central Asia, both bilateral and multilateral, show that Beijing’s strategy treats the region as a corridor for reaching resource bases in Afghanistan, the Middle East and Africa. Central Asia is thus part of China’s broader blueprint of securing strategic resources and supplies to feed its developing economy (Z. Saipov, China Oil & Gas Monitor, Week 21, Issue 396, News Base, May 31, p. 3–4). Hu Jintao (L) and Islam Karimov Illustratively, Chinese Vice Premier Hui Liangyu’s two-week official tour of Congo, Tanzania, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan on September 1–13 (English.sina.com, September 6) supports the premise that...

China has detained and intimidated dozens of ethnic Uighurs in the far western region of Xinjiang for speaking out on rights abuses following riots in the regional capital three years ago, Amnesty International said. In July 2009, the capital city of Urumqi was rocked by violence between majority Han Chinese and minority Uighurs that killed nearly 200 people. Many of the Muslim Uighurs, who speak a Turkic language and call Xinjiang home, chafe at Beijing's rule. Since then, China has executed nine people it accused of instigating the riots, detained and prosecuted hundreds and ramped up spending on security, according...

China typically exercises caution when making public statements about terrorist attacks in Xinjiang. When China blames attacks on Pakistan-based terrorist organizations, such as the possibly defunct East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), it risks adding tensions to the Sino-Pakistani “all-weather” friendship. [1] However, when China blames attacks on local Uyghurs it is tantamount to an admission that its policies in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region have not created a “harmonious society.” Zhou Yongkang (left), member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), shakes hands with a local Uygur farmer...

It has been a difficult summer for Red China’s restive western province Xinjiang. A series of incidents characterized as terrorism have struck two of the province’s cities, causing death, destruction and ethnic tension. This picture was further complicated when the government of the city of Kashgar published a statement online that claimed at least one of the perpetrators had been trained in Pakistan (Xinhua, August 1). The allegation by Communist Chinese officials cast a shadow over Sino-Pakistani relations, a bilateral relationship that had been characterized in Kashgar just the month before by Pakistani Ambassador to China Masood Khan as “higher...

China pointed a finger at Pakistan, one of its closest foreign partners, as it blamed one of two deadly attacks over the weekend in the northwestern Xinjiang region on Muslim extremists trained across the Pakistani border.‬ Police also "executed on the spot" two more suspected attackers in the city of Kashgar, according to a local government statement, while paramilitary police with shotguns and automatic weapons patrolled the streets to prevent further unrest. Local authorities said 20 people were killed in all in the attacks by knife-wielding members of the Uighur ethnic minority on Saturday and Sunday in the second week...

China blames extremists for Xinjiang attack China says a group led by militants trained in Pakistan was behind Sunday's attack in Kashgar in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous region. In a statement on the Internet, the government in Kashgar says a suspect detained after the attack told police that the leaders of their group belong to a separatist organization called the "East Turkistan Islamic Movement." They reportedly learned how to make explosives in Pakistan before carrying out Sunday's attack. On Sunday night, a group of attackers stabbed people on the streets of Kashgar, killing 6 people and injured 15. Five suspects...

Knife-wielding attackers killed 10 people in ChinaÂ’s Xinjiang region and another four were shot dead by police as a wave of violence swept the ethnically-torn area, state media and officials said on Sunday. The unrest occurred in the ancient Silk Road city of Kashgar in two separate attacks, and local residents said on Sunday the city centre was under lockdown, with security forces patrolling the streets. Xinjiang has seen several outbreaks of ethnic violence in recent years as the mainly Muslim Uyghur minority bridles under what it regards as oppression by the government and the unwanted immigration of ethnic Han...

Attacks in China's Xinjiang, 13 dead In China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region on Saturday night, two men brandishing knives attacked passers-by, killing 6 people. At least 6 others were killed in explosions that occurred near the area just before the incident. China's state-run Xinhua news agency says the 2 men jumped into a truck in Kashgar city. Then they drove into a crowd of people. The pair stabbed 6 people to death. One of the attackers died while being captured. Xinhua says that about an hour before the attack, 2 explosions occurred near the scene, one from a minivan, which...

Blast in China's Kashgar kills at least 3: reports By Terril Yue Jones BEIJING | Sun Jul 31, 2011 6:25am EDT (Reuters) - An explosion rocked the far-west Chinese city of Kashgar Sunday, killing at least three people including a policeman in the latest in a series of attacks in the region this month, the state-run news agency Xinhua reported. The explosion came about 16 hours after two other blasts were reported in Kashgar and eight people were killed in a knife attack in the city, in the restive Xinjiang region near Tajikistan. A group of Uighur exiles from the...

China on Wednesday raised the death toll to 18 from a clash at a police station in the restive far western region of Xinjiang, saying that 14 "rioters" died along with two policemen and two hostages. Government officials previously said at least four people were killed in what they described as a terrorist attack but which the Germany-based exile group World Uyghur Congress said was an attack on peaceful protesters. The congress had said 20 Uighurs were killed - 14 beaten to death and 6 shot dead - and 70 arrested, when police opened fire on protesters, leading to fighting...

Armed men attack police station in China’s Xinjiang province, killing officers By Keith B. Richburg, Published: July 18 BEIJING —Attackers armed with Molotov cocktails and explosives stormed a police station in China’s restive Muslim province of Xinjiang on Monday, killing and wounding several police officers, taking hostages and setting the building on fire, according to a local official and a report from the state-run news agency Xinhua. Several attackers and some hostages were killed when police converged on the besieged police station, in the crowded “grand bazaar” area in the city of Hotan, and several bystanders in a nearby commercial...

Note: Photos included. SNIPPET: "Boys as young as five can barely hold up the machine guns and pistols in their hands as they take aim at imaginary targets in the Pakistan desert. But this is no sick game, it is their first step along the way to becoming al-Qaeda terrorists as they are taught about military combat and how to launch suicide missions. At hidden camps terrorist chiefs also use toys to teach the boys how they can blow up buildings and mount roadside bomb attacks. One chilling image from a video filmed inside one camp shows children, barely old...

Slain Patrolmen 'Checked' Uyghurs 2010-08-19 Local resentment may have provoked a targeted attack in Xinjiang. AFP Members of a police auxiliary unit killed in a bomb attack Thursday in China’s northwestern Xinjiang region had harassed ethnic Uyghurs, singling out men with beards and women wearing traditional head coverings, according to police sources. The attack in Aksu city, in which a man riding a three-wheeled vehicle threw explosives at a group of uniformed patrolmen, killed seven people and wounded 14, according to wire service reports. The man was taken into custody, while a woman who accompanied him in the attack was...

SNIPPET: "Renewed violence struck China's restive Xinjiang province when seven people were killed and fourteen wounded in a suspected bomb attack today, local officials said. The explosion took place on a three wheeled vehicle in Aksu city and the local officials blamed the blast on "criminal gangs", an abbreviation used by authorities for Muslim separatists." SNIPPET: "Xinjiang has been beset by ethnic conflict and separatist violence for the past few years and last summer witnessed bloody clashes between the Uighurs, the largely Muslim ethnic group and the majority Han Chinese settlers which left 197 people dead." SNIPPET: "The provincial Governor...

An ancient town that was discovered 6.3 kilometers west of the Lop Nor Creek Tomb in Xinjiang is most likely the mysterious town of Zhubin, according to a report from Chongqing Evening News. After more than one year of investigation and study, Lu Houyuan and others recently released the important research results in China's authoritative magazine, the Chinese Science Bulletin. According to sources, the ancient town is one of the three archaeological discoveries made between November and December in 2008 by the Lop Nor Scientific Exploration Team, led by Xia Xuncheng, researcher at the Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography...

In the middle of a terrifying desert north of Tibet, Chinese archaeologists have excavated an extraordinary cemetery. Its inhabitants died almost 4,000 years ago, yet their bodies have been well preserved by the dry air. The cemetery lies in what is now China's northwest province of Xinjiang, yet the people have European features, with brown hair and long noses. Their remains, though lying in one of the world's largest deserts, are buried in upside-down boats. And where tombstones might stand, declaring pious hope for some god's mercy in the afterlife, their cemetery sports instead a vigorous forest of phallic symbols,...

Two held after aircraft toilet fire in China's Xinjiang Reuters Sat Jan 30, 2:37 am ET BEIJING (Reuters) – Chinese police have detained two people after a domestic flight from the restless western region of Xinjiang was forced to turn around when a passenger set fire to toilet paper in the washroom, state media said on Saturday. The official Xinhua news agency said the China Southern flight was bound for the central Chinese city of Wuhan. "The crew of the flight CZ6939 ... discovered the passenger's behavior some time after take-off," Xinhua said, citing Xinjiang police sources. "Two passengers, including...