China tightens security in Xinjiang

China attempts an information blackout in the northwest region after militant attacks kill 16 policemen.

Daily life continues as normal in the already heavily patrolled city of Kashgar.

XINJIANG, CHINA // Tension gripped the heavily Muslim city of Kashgar today, a day after a deadly attack blamed on Islamic militants, as China ratcheted up security and tried to impose an information blackout. Police entered an AFP photographer's hotel room and forced him to delete photos he had taken of the scene. Plainclothes police followed journalists as they moved around the remote city in China's northwest Xinjiang region.

The official Xinhua news agency said the authorities stepped up the police presence on roads into Kashgar and ordered extra security in public places such as government offices, schools and hospitals. Guests at a hotel overlooking the scene of the attack, which killed 16 border police, were told this morning that police had ordered internet service in the city cut, although it was restored by afternoon.

Daily life continued as normal, although with added tension, in the already heavily patrolled city, a 2,000-year-old Silk Road oasis populated by ethnic Uighurs, an Islamic central Asian people who have long bridled under China's control. Muslim worshippers went about their daily prayers at the main Id Kah Mosque, China's largest, as camera-toting Chinese tourists went in and out of the building. Shops in the city's old Uighur quarter were open as usual, but stallholders were reluctant to talk about the attack.

"We can't talk about that. You must understand if we talk about it, the police will arrest us," said a shopkeeper, who declined to be named. Meanwhile, Kashgar's top official divulged further details of yesterday's attack on police officers out for a morning jog, one of China's worst ever such attacks. The Kashgar Communist Party secretary Shi Dagang confirmed Chinese media reports that two Uighur militants had ploughed a lorry into a group of about 70 officers, then detonated two improvised explosive devices.

He said the two assailants had been plotting for at least a month, casing a street where the officers jogged. He said one of the explosives blew off part of one attacker's arm. Police also recovered nine other such devices. Both men were in custody, he said. "For these two people, it is very clear that they are part of violent terrorist forces," Mr Shi said, adding that one was a vegetable vendor and the other a taxi driver, both from Kashgar.

Of the 16 wounded police officers, Mr Shi said four remained in "life-threatening" condition. Foreign witnesses described a "sickening" scene, saying the attackers also hacked at police with machetes. "My wife almost threw up and had to lie down afterward," said Wlodzislaw Duch, a Polish tourist who watched the assault from his hotel room across the street. Mr Shi said the explosives used were similar to those found in a raid on the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) during a raid on the group last year.

The state-controlled China Daily, the government's main outlet to foreign audiences, said ETIM, listed by the UN as a terrorist organisation, was "likely" responsible. Mr Shi said an investigation was continuing, declining comment on ETIM involvement. China has repeatedly warned the ETIM was planning to stage attacks on the Beijing Olympics, which starts on Friday.

Xinjiang, a vast area that borders Central Asia, has about 8.3 million Uighurs, many of whom express anger at what they say has been decades of repressive Communist Chinese rule. Two short-lived East Turkestan republics emerged in Xinjiang in the 1930s and 1940s, when Chinese central government control was weakened by civil war and Japanese invasion. * AFP