World Uyghur Congress

At least four people were killed Monday when police and protesters clashed in China's restive Xinjiang region, the official New China News Agency said. Security forces in the western frontier city of Hotan opened fire on a crowd after people attacked a police station, set it on fire and took hostages, the report said. One police official, a security guard and two hostages were killed in the incident. Dilxat Raxit of the exile group World Uyghur Congress told Reuters news service that police opened fire on peaceful demonstrators, which sparked the fighting.

At least 19 people were killed over the weekend in the far-western city of Kashgar in attacks that China blamed on members of the local Uighur minority who had been training at Islamic camps across the border in Pakistan. Chinese and Uighur sources presented different versions of events, neither of which could be independently verified. In the first attack just before midnight Saturday, the perpetrators hijacked a truck that had been stopped at a red light, killed the driver, then used the truck to plow into a crowd of bystanders, Chinese media said.

At least four people were killed after police and rioters clashed in China's restive Xinjiang province Monday, the official New China News Agency said. Authorities in the western frontier city of Hotan opened fire on a mob after it attacked a police station, set it on fire and took hostages, the report said. One police official, a security guard and two hostages were killed in the incident, the report said. Dilxat Raxit of the World Uyghur Congress told Reuters that police opened fire on peaceful demonstrators, which sparked the fighting.

At least four people were killed Monday when police and protesters clashed in China's restive Xinjiang region, the official New China News Agency said. Security forces in the western frontier city of Hotan opened fire on a crowd after people attacked a police station, set it on fire and took hostages, the report said. One police official, a security guard and two hostages were killed in the incident. Dilxat Raxit of the exile group World Uyghur Congress told Reuters news service that police opened fire on peaceful demonstrators, which sparked the fighting.

China has executed nine people for their participation in the country's worst ethnic rioting in decades, an official news service announced Monday in a terse bulletin. Although the report did not disclose the identity of those executed or even the date the sentence was carried out, it is presumed that most of those executed were Uighurs. Once the dominant ethnic group in northwestern China's Xinjiang region, Uighurs were blamed for the July 5 riots in Urumqi in which 197 people, mostly Han Chinese, were killed and 1,600 injured.

At least 19 people were killed over the weekend in the far-western city of Kashgar in attacks that China blamed on members of the local Uighur minority who had been training at Islamic camps across the border in Pakistan. Chinese and Uighur sources presented different versions of events, neither of which could be independently verified. In the first attack just before midnight Saturday, the perpetrators hijacked a truck that had been stopped at a red light, killed the driver, then used the truck to plow into a crowd of bystanders, Chinese media said.

A man drove an electric tricycle packed with explosives into a crowd in the western Chinese province of Xinjiang on Thursday. The blast, in a region that saw massive ethnic riots last summer, killed seven people and injured 14. Xinjiang government spokeswoman Hou Hanmin said a man was apprehended at the site of the explosion, which occurred outside the city of Aksu in the west-central part of the province, near China's border with Kyrgyzstan....

Police have arrested 70 people from China's minority Uighur ethnic group in the Silk Road oasis city of Kashgar, fearing trouble when the Olympic torch passes through it in June, an exile group said. The Xinjiang regional government's news office denied the reported arrests, and an officer at Kashgar's police headquarters said he knew nothing, but residents said security had been tightened ahead of August's Summer Games in Beijing. Dilxat Raxit, spokesman for the World Uyghur Congress, a Munich, Germany-based exile group that seeks independence for the ethnic group in Xinjiang, said the authorities were using the Olympics as an excuse to crack down on the Turkic-speaking Muslim Uighurs.

Chinese President Hu Jintao cut short his state visit to Italy, which included plans to participate in the Group of 8 summit, to return home today because of protests in Urumqi that raised the specter of more ethnic violence. State news media said Hu left for home to address the unrest in northwestern China's Xinjiang region and would forgo the G-8 summit this week in the Italian city of L'Aquila.

China's worst ethnic violence in years broke out Sunday in the northwestern city of Urumqi, leaving 140 people dead and more than 800 injured. The unrest pitted Uighurs, a long-aggrieved Muslim minority, against the Han Chinese, who increasingly dominate the far-flung Xinjiang region. With the death toll climbing over the course of the day, the violence appeared to be far deadlier than that last year in the Tibetan region.

At least four people were killed after police and rioters clashed in China's restive Xinjiang province Monday, the official New China News Agency said. Authorities in the western frontier city of Hotan opened fire on a mob after it attacked a police station, set it on fire and took hostages, the report said. One police official, a security guard and two hostages were killed in the incident, the report said. Dilxat Raxit of the World Uyghur Congress told Reuters that police opened fire on peaceful demonstrators, which sparked the fighting.

A man drove an electric tricycle packed with explosives into a crowd in the western Chinese province of Xinjiang on Thursday. The blast, in a region that saw massive ethnic riots last summer, killed seven people and injured 14. Xinjiang government spokeswoman Hou Hanmin said a man was apprehended at the site of the explosion, which occurred outside the city of Aksu in the west-central part of the province, near China's border with Kyrgyzstan....

China has executed nine people for their participation in the country's worst ethnic rioting in decades, an official news service announced Monday in a terse bulletin. Although the report did not disclose the identity of those executed or even the date the sentence was carried out, it is presumed that most of those executed were Uighurs. Once the dominant ethnic group in northwestern China's Xinjiang region, Uighurs were blamed for the July 5 riots in Urumqi in which 197 people, mostly Han Chinese, were killed and 1,600 injured.

Hundreds of weeping Uighur women, enraged by the arrests of their husbands and sons, confronted armed Chinese police in the traditional market in Urumqi this morning as the worst ethnic violence here in years dragged on for a third day.