China's Urumqi tense after police shooting

China's Urumqi tense after police shooting

By Dan Martin – 12 hours ago

URUMQI, China (AFP) — Heavily armed security forces were out in force in China's volatile Urumqi on Tuesday close to where police shot dead two Muslim Uighurs who state media said were calling for jihad.

Large groups of police armed with semi-automatic weapons and batons were deployed close to the scene of Monday's violence, where Chinese authorities said police shot and killed two Uighur "lawbreakers" and wounded another.

The shootings showed the capital of the northwest Xinjiang region remained a powder keg more than a week after ethnic unrest on July 5 left at least 184 people dead, despite an ongoing security clampdown.

An Algerian-based Al-Qaeda affiliate meanwhile called for reprisals against Chinese workers in north Africa, according to an intelligence report by London-based risk analysis firm Stirling Assynt.

The call came from Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the Stirling report said. It is the first time Osama bin Laden's network has directly threatened China or its interests, it noted.

Xinjiang is a huge mountainous region bordering eight countries, including Pakistan and Afghanistan. Its Muslim Uighur community has long chafed at Chinese rule.

Foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang said China would take all precautions to protect its overseas interests, while not commenting directly on the alleged Al-Qaeda threat.

"We will keep a close eye on developments and make joint efforts with relevant countries to take all necessary measures to ensure the safety of overseas Chinese institutions and people," he said.

The spokesman also appealed for understanding from the Muslim world over China's handling of the unrest, while denying accusations from Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan that Beijing was guilty of "a kind of genocide."

"We hope that the relevant Muslim countries and Muslims can recognise the nature of the July 5 incident in Urumqi," Qin told reporters.

"The incident ... was aimed at sabotaging China and sabotaging ethnic unity. It was orchestrated by the three forces (of terrorism, religious extremism and separatism) in and outside of China."

On Tuesday, shops in the Uighur district close to the site of Monday's police shootings were slow to open and a major mosque near where the attack happened was shut early Tuesday with security guards outside.

One businessman said he was not opening his clothing stall.

"It is too tense right here. How can I make money with no customers around?" the man from the ethnic Hui minority told AFP.

By the afternoon, Uighur merchants selling goods ranging from carpets to shoes lined the roads close to the scene of the violence, although the city's grand bazaar remained closed.

Police checked the bags of some pedestrians in the area, according to an AFP reporter at the scene.

The latest shooting was the first time the government said security forces had killed anyone since the unrest broke out, despite claims by exiled Uighurs that many people had died in the clampdown.

State news agency Xinhua Tuesday released its first detailed report of the event, saying the three Uighur men had tried to incite other Muslims to launch a "jihad", or holy war, and attacked a mosque guard before police shot them.

A government statement released in Urumqi Monday said the police intervened when the three men attacked a fellow Uighur.

But two Uighurs who said they witnessed the incident from 50 metres (yards) away told AFP that the trio had been trying to attack security forces.

"They hacked at the soldiers with big knives and then they were shot," one of the witnesses told AFP.

Before Monday's shootings, security forces had worked hard to regain control of the city, and many shops outside the Uighur district had reopened and traffic had returned to the streets.

The initial unrest of July 5 saw Uighurs attack Han Chinese, according to the government and witnesses interviewed by AFP, in the worst ethnic violence to hit the country in decades.

Thousands of Han Chinese retaliated in the following days, arming themselves with makeshift weapons and marching through parts of Urumqi vowing vengeance against the Uighurs.

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