 5 killed by Xinjiang police part of 'holy war training group'
(China Daily)
Updated: 2008-07-10 07:30 URUMQI: The five people shot dead by police on Tuesday in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region were part of a "holy war training group", the local public security bureau claimed yesterday. A team of 15 Xinjiang police officers raided an apartment on Tuanjie Road in the regional capital Urumqi on Tuesday afternoon, in search of three men believed to have stabbed a Han woman while she was at work in a local beauty salon on May 23, a spokesman for the bureau said. The whereabouts of the gang was determined after the identities of the attackers were identified from security videotape and with help from the victim. After police threw tear gas into the apartment, members of the gang ran out waving knives, the spokesman said. One officer was injured, he said. The gang comprised 15 people - five women and 10 men - who were all wielding knives and threatening to "perish together" and shouting "sacrifice for Allah", the spokesman said. "The police were forced to open fire," he claimed. "They killed five people on the spot and injured two others. The injured were sent to hospital and the remaining nine people were captured," he said, adding that more than 30 knives were found in the apartment, one of which was 50 cm long. All of the gang members were of Uygur ethnicity, the spokesman said. In custody, the gang members said they had been in training for a "holy war", he claimed. They said their mission was to kill Han people, whom they regard as heretics, and establish their own independent state, he said. Xinhua (China Daily 07/10/2008 page3) |
