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China riots: 140 people killed as Muslim separatists go on the rampage in Xinjiang
About 140 people have been killed and another 828 injured following riots in the capital of China's volatile Xinjiang region.
Members of a Muslim ethnic group, the Uighers, clashed with police in Urumqi after a peaceful protest yesterday involving about 3,000 people.
Rioters overturned barricades, and attacked vehicles and houses. Uigher exile groups said the violence started only after police began violently cracking down on the peaceful protest.
Women injured in a riot comforting each other on a street in Urumqi, capital of China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region
A video grab from CCTV shows a burning vehicle in Urumqi
Wu Nong, director of the news office of the Xinjiang provincial government, said more than 260 vehicles were attacked or set on fire and 203 houses were damaged. He said 140 people were killed and 828 injured in the violence.
The official Xinhua News Agency also said 140 people died and that the death toll 'was still climbing'.
Tensions between Uighurs and the majority Han Chinese are never far from the surface in Xinjiang, China's vast Central Asian buffer province.
Militant Uighurs have waged sporadic, violent separatist campaign in the area. The overwhelming majority of Urumqi's 2.3 million people are Han Chinese.
State television aired footage that showed protesters attacking and kicking people on the ground. Other people sat dazed with blood pouring down their faces.
People turning over a police car during yesterday's riotsAn injured man is transported to an urgent care centre in Urumqi as a vehicle burns in the street
Firemen put out a fire in Dawannanlu Street in Urumqi
Adam Grode, an American Fulbright scholar studying in Urumqi, said he heard explosions and also saw a few people being carried off on stretchers and a Han Chinese man with blood on his shirt entering a hospital.
He said he saw police pushing people back with tear gas, fire hoses and batons, and protesters knocking over police barriers and smashing bus windows.
'Every time the police showed some force, the people would jump the barriers and get back on the street. It was like a cat-and-mouse sort of game,' said Grode, 26.
Mobile phone service provided by at least one company was cut this morning to stop people from organizing further action in Xinjiang.
Xinjiang's government accused Uighur exiles led by a former businesswoman now living in America, Rebiya Kadeer, of fomenting the violence via the telephone and Internet.
Xinjiang Governor Nur Bekri said in a televised address early Monday that 'Rebiya had phone conversations with people in China on July 5 in order to incite and Web sites ... were used to orchestrate the incitement and spread propaganda.'
Battered and bloody: An injured man lies in the street
Police assemble opposite protestors in Urumqi, in China's western Xinjiang region
Where the riots took place
A government statement quoted by Xinhua said the violence was 'a pre-empted, organised violent crime. It is instigated and directed from abroad and carried out by outlaws in the country.'
Kadeer's spokesman, Alim Seytoff, said by telephone from Washington, D.C., that the accusations were baseless.
'It's common practice for the Chinese government to accuse Ms. Kadeer for any unrest in East Turkestan and His Holiness the Dalai Lama for any unrest in Tibet,' he said.
The protest started on Sunday with demonstrators demanding a probe into a fight between Uighurs and Han Chinese workers at a southern China factory last month.
Accounts differed over what happened next in Urumqi, but the violence seemed to have started when a crowd of protesters - who started out peaceful - refused to disperse.
Uigher exile groups said the violence started when Chinese security forces cracked down on the peaceful protest.
A protest that began peacefully turned violent Sunday as police fired shots in the air and used batons to disperse the crowd
Residents walk by Chinese paramilitary police on duty near a square closed after riots in Urumqi
'We are extremely saddened by the heavy-handed use of force by the Chinese security forces against the peaceful demonstrators,' said Seytoff, vice president of the Washington-based Uyghur American Association.
'We ask the international community to condemn China's killing of innocent Uihgurs. This is a very dark day in the history of the Uighur people,' he said.
The association, led by a former businesswoman now living in America, Rebiya Kadeer, estimated that 1,000 to 3,000 people took part in the protest.
Four Uighur detainees at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba were recently released and relocated to Bermuda despite Beijing's objections because U.S. officials have said they fear the men would be executed if they returned to China. Officials have also been trying to transfer 13 others to the Pacific nation of Palau.
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