By Mark Magnier in Wall St Journal, May 22, 2014
BEIJING—Violence again rocked the capital of China’s restive Xinjiang region, as explosives thrown from vehicles ripped through a street market, killing 31 people and injuring more than 90, Chinese state media reported.
China’s public-security ministry described the attack as a “violent terrorism case.”
The official Xinhua news agency, citing witnesses, said two vehicles rammed into people at the open-air market shortly before 8 a.m., and then explosives were thrown from them. One of the vehicles exploded, Xinhua said.
The attack is the second to hit the city in less than a month in what appears to be a rapid escalation of unrest in a region where a separatist movement has attacked police and government targets periodically for decades.
Violence has emanated from Xinjiang, as mass stabbings and attacks involving crude explosives have increased in number and spread to railway stations and other public places in Xinjiang as well as elsewhere in China.
Attackers at Urumqi’s south railway station in late April killed three people and injured 79 using knives and explosives, according to state media, which labeled the incident a terrorist strike.
Photos from the news agency posted online showed flames bursting from what appeared to be a vehicle, and police and emergency workers carrying away injured people. The Xinjiang government’s news website, Tianshan, said that in addition to the 31 dead, 94 people were injured. Police and government officials didn’t immediately respond to telephone and faxed requests for comment.
Xinjiang, which abuts Central Asia, has been hit by sporadic outbreaks of ethnic violence in recent years between some members of the ethnic Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking and mainly Muslim group, and the country’s dominant Han Chinese ethnic group.
Thursday’s explosion took place at the market near People’s Park in the center of Urumqi.
Beijing has accused separatist and religious extremists of being behind the recent violence. President Xi Jinping, who had visited a mosque in Urumqi a few hours before the April railway station attack, has vowed a sustained effort to crush the separatists.
No claim of responsibility was issued for Thursday’s marketplace explosion, though such claims are seldom issued. Police in Xinjiang have accused the East Turkestan Islamic Movement of plotting the April 30 railway station attack. Authorities have launched a manhunt for a group member whom Xinhua said was suspected of planning the attack from abroad.
In the past, China’s government has alleged terrorists in Xinjiang have received training and inspiration from groups in neighboring countries, including Pakistan. At a security forum Wednesday in Shanghai, President Xi addressed the heads of state from several Asian countries, including the presidents of Pakistan and Kazakhstan, in calling for a shared approach in dealing with the worsening problems of terrorism, separatism and extremism.
On Wednesday, Xinjiang’s high court announced that courts in six parts of the region had convicted and sentenced 39 people for disseminating audio and video materials that authorities said incited violence and ethnic disunity and for taking part in “terrorist organizations,” according to a statement on the court’s website.
Chinese forces have stepped up security in the region in recent weeks, police in some cities have been issued guns and patrols by tactical units and paramilitary police have been stepped up at railway stations in many parts of the country.
Uighur activists in China and in exile, however, have said that years of heavy policing have contributed to a sense of marginalization among Uighurs already alienated by restrictions on religious practices and by an increase in Han Chinese migrants to the region. http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303749904579576791226602678?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702303749904579576791226602678.html
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