Chinese police kill six in alleged bombing attempt

Chinese police shot and killed six would-be bombers Monday in the latest violence to strike the far northwestern region of Xinjiang, a local government spokesman and official website said. The area has seen sporadic unrest blamed on Muslim Uighurs, an ethnic minority whose members often complain of government repression and cultural displacement by China’s majority ethnic Han.

Police were called to a business district in the town of Shule on Monday morning to investigate a suspicious man carrying what appeared to be an explosive device, according to TS News, which specializes in news about Xinjiang.

It said the man was shot and killed after he charged police with an axe and attempted to detonate the device. Another five suspects with bombs were also shot and killed as police conducted a cleanup operation, the site said, without elaborating. It said no officers or onlookers were injured.

An official with the Shule county propaganda department, who gave only his surname, Yu, confirmed the report but declined to offer further details.

Chinese authorities tightly control information from the Xinjiang region, and independent accounts of events there are not available.

No word was given on the identity of the suspects.

At least 400 people have been killed in and outside the region over the past two years in violence China blames on radicals among Xinjiang's native Uighur ethnic group. Homemade explosive devices have often featured in the violence, which has ranged from assaults on police stations to knife attacks on train travelers.

Critics and human rights advocates say Uighurs have chafed under the repressive rule of the Han Chinese-dominated government, and complain of economic disenfranchisement with the inflow of Han Chinese to their homeland.

Authorities have responded to sporadic attacks blamed on Uighurs by launching a one-year crackdown on violence in Xinjiang, where security was already tight following riots in the regional capital city of Urumqi in 2009 that left nearly 200 people dead.

The Associated Press