Police Kill Five in Clash in Western China

BEIJING, Aug. 10 -- Police shot and killed five people who hurled homemade bombs at government buildings in the restive Xinjiang region of far western China, where an attack last week left 16 border police dead, state media reported Sunday.

The New China News Agency said two police officers and a security guard were wounded in the attacks on a police station and the office of industry and commerce in Kucha. The oasis city is on the northern rim of the Taklimakan Desert, about halfway between the region's capital of Urumqi and Kashgar, where last week's deadly attack occurred.

Police cordoned off the area shortly after the explosions, which occurred between 3:20 a.m. and 4 a.m. in the city of 400,000, the agency reported.

Xinjiang is home to the ethnic Uighurs, a Muslim minority in the country that has long chafed under Chinese rule. A group calling itself the Turkestan Islamic Party, an underground separatist organization, has threatened to stage attacks during the Olympic Games to draw attention to its demands for the region's independence.

Although terrorism experts are skeptical that the group has the sophistication or resources to launch large-scale attacks, the Chinese government has used threats from the group and other related separatist movements as a reason to arrest dozens in the area.

Xinjiang police say that since the beginning of the year, they have broken up five separatist groups and arrested 82 people on suspicions of plotting against the Games. In June, the government executed three people identified as members of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, another name used by the organization.

The Turkestan Islamic Party asserted responsibility for two small bus bombings that killed two people last month in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province in southwestern China. The government denied the bombings were related to terrorism, and local officials said they are seeking a suspect in connection with the incidents.

Two men were arrested at the scene of the attack last week in Kashgar. Police said they drove a dump truck at high speed into a crowd of border police jogging near their barracks in downtown Kashgar. The assailants then threw homemade explosives and slashed police with knives before being subdued. Officials described the attack as a terrorist incident, but there has been no assertion of responsibility.

China has spared no expense in providing security for the Games in the main host city of Beijing. In addition to 80,000 police officers, 100,000 anti-terrorism troops are mobilized and 300,000 surveillance cameras have been placed throughout the city. The army said it is flying unmanned drones to increase surveillance and have placed Hongqi 7 air-to-ground missile batteries near Olympic venues.