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China: eight dead in Xinjiang region knife attack
Two knife-wielding men hijacked a truck in China's restive northwest, rammed the vehicle into a crowd, then got out to attack the pedestrians, a police official said SundayThe attack, in which eight people are reported to have died and 22 injured, happened in the Silk Road city of Kashgar in northwest Xinjiang, a region rocked by ethnic violence in recent years. The attackers' identities and motive were unclear, but an overseas activist group said it worried Chinese authorities might crack down on minority Uighurs blamed for previous violence in the region. State-run Xinhua News Agency reported that two blasts were heard about an hour before the incident Saturday night one from a minivan and the other from the food stall-lined street where the hijacking took place. The police official, from the information office of the Xinjiang regional public security bureau, said she could not confirm whether there were explosions. According to the official, two men hijacked a truck and stabbed the driver to death. The men then drove the truck into a crowd, got out of the vehicle and attacked people along the road with a knife or knives, said the official, who refused to give her name, as is common with Chinese officials. People who came under attack retaliated, and one of the suspects was killed and the other caught, the official said. Posted by: tipper 2011-07-31 |
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