China: another Xinjiang attack amid growing repression

With the Olympics in Beijing in full course, three security officials were killed Aug. 12 at a road block 30 kilometers from Kashgar, Xinjiang. The official Chinese press agency “Xinhua said assailants jumped from a vehicle passing through the checkpoint and stabbed the agents. “These were just some terrorists,” said a local police officer in Yamanya, Shule county, where the attack occurred. A fourth security official was wounded in an attack in Yamanya town, according to the New China News Agency. The assailants remain at large. (WP, Aug. 13; AGI, TVNZ, Aug. 12)

Dilxat Raxit, spokesman for the German-based World Uighur Congress, said authorities in Kuqa (Kucha) have detained more than 90 people since the Aug. 10 attack there. “This includes women,” he wrote in an email, quoting local Uighurs he had talked to by telephone. “They have also been mass detentions in adjacent areas.” (AlJazeera, Aug. 13)

See our last post on China and the Uighurs.