Separatists launch attack in China's far west

Suspected separatists and suicide bombers launch a dozen attacks in west China, leaving eight dead.

BEIJING // Suspected separatists and suicide bombers launched a dozen attacks in west China today, killing eight people in the blasts and a subsequent shoot-out with police. It was the second attack in restive Xinjiang in a week after 16 police were killed at a border post on Monday. China says militants seeking an independent "East Turkestan" homeland for Muslim Uighurs in the Xinjiang region are among the top threats to the Beijing Olympics, which began on Friday.

The homemade grenade attacks shook Kuqa, a town in the south of Xinjiang more than 3,000km from Beijing, before and around dawn, the agency said. Four suicide bombers died in the attacks on government offices that killed one person, and police shot dead three assailants, the official Xinhua news agency said. The entire county has now been cordoned off, business has been suspended and roadside operations shut, the agency said.

"The lawbreakers drove a taxi to the local public security office, industry and business administration and other sites and tossed homemade explosives, destroying two police vehicles," it said. One suspect told police 15 people were involved in the attacks, Xinhua said without accounting for the others. Local officials contacted refused to clarify how many died or how.

"Our leaders haven't determined the nature of the incident yet," said an official in the Kuqa Communist Party Committee office. He refused to give his name. "It looks like separatist forces," he said when asked. An Uighur businessman in Kuqa, who gave his name as Anwar, said explosions, shots and sirens echoed through the town. "I don't know exactly what happened, but whatever it was will make them even more worried about stability," he said by phone.

Last month, Kuqa police announced payments of up to 200,000 yuan (Dh107,250) for information on planned "terrorist incidents involving the Olympics", Xinjiang media reported at the time. The county, which has a population of 400,000, is about 740km from Xinjiang's capital, Urumqi. Wang Wei, secretary-general of the Beijing Organising Committee for the Olympic games, told reporters that Xinjiang separatists "want to use the platform of the Olympics to amplify the effects". *Reuters