KASHI - An official of Kashi Prefecture in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region said on Tuesday the raid on Kashi border police a day earlier was a terrorist attack.
The attack had been planned in advance, Shi Dagang, Communist Party secretary of Kashi, told a press conference held in Kashi on Tuesday afternoon.
He said the two suspects caught at the scene had confessed.
Shi said that in documents prepared beforehand, the two had written that the attack was more important than their lives or those of their mothers, so they had to wage "holy war".
But Liu Yaohua, head of the public security department of Xinjiang, said at a press conference held in Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang, there is no evidence that Monday's attack on police in Kashi was related to the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM).
"No sufficient evidence has been found to say for sure the ETIM was behind Monday's deadly attack," Liu told reporters.
Liu confirmed the two suspects had confessed their crime.
The Kashi police said one of the attackers drove a truck at a team of more than 70 policemen who were jogging past the Yiquan Hotel in a regular morning exercise at about 8:00 am. At the same time, the other suspect threw an explosive toward the gate of the station.
The attackers were detained on the spot, after killing at least 16 policemen and injuring 16 others.
The two suspects were identified as Abdurahman Azat, a 33-year-old vegetable peddler, and Kurbanjan Hemit, a 28-year-old taxi driver, Shi told reporters in Kashi.
The two said in their confession they had closely observed the time and route the Kashi border police used for morning runs for more than a month before Monday's attack.
The truck used in the raid was stolen and parked near the Kashi border police division the night before the deadly attack.
