May 22, 2014: In this photo released by China's Xinhua News Agency, police officers stand guard near a blast site which has been cordoned off, in downtown Urumqi, capital of northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. (AP Photo/Cao Zhiheng)
has blamed on radical Muslim separatists. China's state-run Xinhua News Agency said that the assailants plowed through crowds of shoppers in off-road vehicles and threw explosives out the window before crashing head-on in the attack in the city of Urumqi. The agency said one of the vehicles then exploded and quotes an eyewitness as saying there were up to a dozen blasts in all.
"I heard four or five explosions. I was very scared. I saw three or four people lying on the ground," Fang Shaoying, the owner of a small supermarket located near the scene of the blast, told the Associated Press.
The Xinjiang regional government said in a statement that the early morning attack was "a serious violent terrorist incident of a particularly vile nature."
It was not immediately clear who was responsible for the attack. Recent violence has been blamed on extremists seeking to overthrow Chinese rule in the region, which is home to the native Turkic-speaking Uighurs but has seen large inflows from China's ethnic Han majority in recent decades.
The death toll was the highest for a violent incident in Xinjiang since dayslong riots in Urumqi in 2009 between Uighurs and Hans left almost 200 people dead. Thursday's attack also was the bloodiest single act of violence in Xinjiang in recent history.
Photos from the scene posted to popular Chinese social media site Weibo showed at least three people lying in a street with a large fire in the distance giving off huge plumes of smoke. Others were sitting in the roadway in shock, with vegetables, boxes and stools strewn around them. Police in helmets and body armor were seen manning road blocks
as police cars, ambulances and fire trucks arrived on the scene.Urumqi was the scene of a bomb attack at a train station late last month that killed three people, including two attackers, and injured 79. Security in the city has been significantly tightened since that attack, which took place as Chinese President Xi Jinping was visiting the region.
In response to Thursday's attack, Xi pledged to "severely punish terrorists and spare no efforts in maintaining stability," Xinhua reported.
Public Security Minister Guo Shengkun, China's top police official, was also dispatched to Urumqi at the head of a team to investigate the incident.
In Beijing, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said the incident "lays bare again the anti-human, anti-social and anti-civilization nature of the violent terrorists and deserves the condemnation of the world community and the Chinese people."
"The Chinese government is confident and capable of cracking down on violent terrorists. Their plots will never succeed," Hong said.
Prior to last month's train station attack, the city had been relatively quiet since the 2009 ethnic riots amid a smothering police presence. The sprawling metropolis's population of more than 3 million people is about three-fourths Han Chinese.
The station attack and other violence have been blamed on Uighur extremists, but information about events in the area, which is about 1,550 miles west of Beijing, is tightly controlled.
Tensions between Chinese and ethnic Uighurs in Xinjiang have been simmering for years, but recent attacks -- while still relatively crude -- show
an audaciousness and deliberateness that wasn't present before. They
are also increasingly going after civilians, rather than the police and
government targets of past years.In an unprecedented incident last year, three Uighurs rammed a vehicle into crowds in a suicide attack near the Forbidden City gate in the heart of Beijing, killing themselves and two tourists.
And in March, 29 people were slashed and stabbed to death at a train station in the southern city of Yunnan blamed on Uighur extremists bent on waging jihad.
Uighur activists say the violence is being fueled by restrictive and discriminatory policies and practices directed at Uighurs and a sense that the benefits of economic growth
have largely accrued to Chinese migrants while excluding Uighurs. The
knowledge that Muslims elsewhere are rising up against their governments
also seems to be contributing to the increased militancy.Thursday's attack came two days after courts in Xinjiang sentenced 39 people to prison after being convicted of crimes
including organizing and leading terrorist groups, inciting ethnic
hatred, ethnic discrimination and the illegal manufacturing of guns.Among those convicted Tuesday was 25-year-old Maimaitiniyazi Aini, who received five years in prison for inciting ethnic hatred and ethnic discrimination for comments he made in six chat groups involving 1,310 people, the Supreme Court
said.In another case, a Uighur man was jailed for 15 years after he preached jihad, or holy war, to his son and another young man, according to the court.
"A policy of constantly tightening controls on East Turkestan is not effective in preventing attacks. Sooner or later Chinese are going to have to come to that reality because the evidence is just smacking them in the face." -- Expert
Explosives hurled from two vehicles which ploughed into an open market in China's troubled Xinjiang (East Turkestan) killed 31 people on Thursday, state media reported, the deadliest act of violence in the region in years. China's Ministry of Public Security called the attack in the regional capital of Urumqi a "serious violent terrorist incident" and domestic security chief Meng Jianzhu vowed to strengthen a crackdown on the "arrogance of terrorists". China has blamed a series of knife and bomb attacks in recent months on separatist militants from Xinjiang (East Turkestan), the traditional home of the ethnic Muslim Uighurs.
The cross-country vehicles rammed into shoppers in an open market, Xinhua news agency reported, citing witness reports. Explosives were flung out of the vehicles, and one of the vehicles exploded. One witness told Reuters he saw the aftermath of the blasts on his way to work. "The air was full of the smell of gunpowder and the sound of sobbing," he said. "There were simply too many (casualties), old folks who were at the morning market." A business owner told Xinhua he had heard a dozen loud explosions at the market near Renmin Park in downtown Urumqi. Xinjiang has been plagued by violence for years, but rights activists and exile groups say the government's own heavy handed policies in the region have sowed the seeds of unrest.
Photos posted on social media purportedly of the blast, but not verified by Reuters, showed a column of smoke and chaos at the market, with bloodied people lying on the tree-lined road near small stands selling fruit, vegetables and eggs. "There were two vehicles that drove like crazy towards the morning market," another witness who declined to give his name told Reuters by telephone. "The market was total chaos. Hawkers and shoppers started running everywhere... it was definitely a terrorist act. I'm so angry." Other photos showed riot police on the scene and bodies lying amid flames. Produce and debris were scattered across the street.
Dilshat Rexit, spokesman for the exiled World Uyghur Congress, said in an e-mail to Reuters that while he wasn't sure who committed the attack, he believed Beijing's policies in the region should be examined. "The volatility of the situation and Beijing's repressive policies in the area have a direct relationship to this," Rexit said. "I urge Beijing not to use this incident as an excuse to expand repressive policies, and instead to adjust policies to ameliorate a deteriorating situation." In a posting on its Chinese-language microblog account, the U.S. Embassy said it offered condolences to victims of the "violent attack", but stopped short of labelling it terrorism. The Xinjiang government could not be immediately reached for comment.
CRACKDOWN
Xi Jinping said police would "step up patrols and security controls over possible terrorist targets and prevent ripple effects", Xinhua reported.
Xi vowed to "severely punish terrorists". A working group led by Guo Shengkun, China's Minister of Public Security, was dispatched to the region to investigate. The attack was the deadliest in a recent series targeting crowded public places in China. In March, 29 people were stabbed to death at a train station in the southwestern city of Kunming. A bomb and knife attack earlier this month at an Urumqi train station killed one bystander and wounded 79. A car burst into flames at the edge of Beijing's Tiananmen Square in October, killing five people, in what Beijing said was a terrorist attack.
China has said Islamist militants from Xinjiang (East Turkestan) carried out the attacks. Xinjiang (East Turkestan), resource-rich and strategically located on the borders of central Asia, is home to the Uighur people, a mostly Muslim ethnic group who speak a Turkic language and are culturally distinct from China's ethnic Han majority. Violent riots shook the region in 2009, when hundreds of locals took to the streets in Urumqi, burning and smashing vehicles. Dozens were killed in the unrest.
But exiles and rights groups say China's repressive policies that have targeted religious freedoms and economic opportunities for Uighurs are the culprits when it comes to unrest. In recent weeks, China has strengthened a crackdown on Uighurs in the region, jailing dozens for spreading extremist propaganda and manufacturing arms, among other charges. Christopher Johnson, a former China analyst at the CIA, said China's leadership may come to the realisation that a policy of constantly tightening controls on Xinjiang (East Turkestan) may not be effective in preventing attacks.
"I'm kind of doubtful that they are going to announce some sort of more liberal policy," said Johnson, who now works at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
"But sooner or later I think they are going to have to come to that reality because the evidence is just smacking them in the face."
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