BBC: China: Unrest in Kashgar, Xinjiang, leaves 15 dead

BBC: China 15 dead

Map of China

Weekend unrest in Kashgar, in China’s western Xinjiang region, has left at least 15 people dead, state media say.

The violence began on Saturday when two men killed a truck driver, then drove his lorry into pedestrians and attacked them with knives, killing six. One of the attackers also died.

On Sunday an explosion killed three people and police shot dead “four suspects”, the Xinhua agency said.

Xinjiang has a Muslim Uighur minority and has seen serious ethnic tension.

The BBC’s Martin Patience in Beijing says there are reports of further clashes in the city on Sunday.

Migration dispute

A local official was quoted as saying that both of Saturday’s attackers were Uighurs.

According to tianshannet.com, a Xinjiang government-run website, the assailants hijacked a truck waiting at traffic lights, stabbing the driver to death before ploughing the vehicle into bystanders.

They then got out of the vehicle and started attacking people at random, the report said.

It said the crowd then turned on the men, killing one of them. The second man was captured.

State-run news agency Xinhua said the attack had been preceded by two explosions.

Worshipper in Kashgar, Xinjiang, file picXinjiang has a Muslim Uighur majority

Twenty-eight people were reported to have been taken to hospital.

On Sunday, Xinhua reported another explosion, which it said killed three people, including a police officer, and injured three others.

It also said police had shot dead “four suspects” in the city, without giving further details.

This is the second outbreak of violence in Xinjiang in a month.

On 18 July, several police officials and a number of civilians were killed in an attack on a police station in the city of Hotan.

Chinese officials blamed the attack on “terrorists” from the Uighur minority.

Uighur activists said the security forces had provoked clashes by opening fire on a peaceful demonstration.

The majority of Xinjiang’s population is ethnically Uighur – who are Muslims with strong cultural ties to Central Asia.

Our correspondent, Martin Patience, says many Uighurs are unhappy about what they say is the repressive rule of Beijing and are angered by the migration of the majority Han Chinese to the region.

In 2009, riots erupted in Xinjiang in which nearly 200 people died after tensions flared between the Uighurs and the Han.

About Eeyore

Canadian artist and counter-jihad and freedom of speech activist as well as devout Schrödinger's catholic

9 Replies to “BBC: China: Unrest in Kashgar, Xinjiang, leaves 15 dead”

  1. I think the Chinese will sort them out with brute force. A wonderful thing. A good terrorist is a dead one.

  2. China is going to use brute force to try and quell the Moslems, the problem is that religion is only one of the reasons for the unrest. The people living outside of the big cities are living a third world subsistence level standard of living, unrest in one area may and probably will spread to other regions as they fight to get their share of the prosperity pie that people think China is enjoying. In reality China’s economy is close to the level of the US and they are worried about Europe or the US defaulting and causing a world wide collapse.

  3. I think that is real danger Richard. If the unrest spreads then things get too interwoven with the other narratives that create friction in that country. But if they manage to quell it then it is a excellent lesson in how to deal with this kind of thing. I wonder why Arab, the UN UMMA and the lefties are so quiet about this horrendous islamphobia. Do they not take Islamophobia seriously or do they take it seriously when lefties have softened up the opposition for them. It just shows who vital the lefties are to the Muzzies.

  4. The people are not exactly the tallest. As a basketball player I would like to go over there and see for myself.

  5. How vital the lefties are to the Muzzies.Typo for Brownest and Brightest. I was distracting him by playing ball in the room

  6. The left takes in seriously only when they can use it to gain power in a nation that is nominally democratic, a nation controlled by the left is free to kill anyone they want and left in other countries will yawn.

  7. The left are being exposed during this time as never before. The weight of truth eventually wins. It takes time but it wins.

  8. You got that right, here in the US we are probably witnessing the last breath of a powerful left, at least the last one for several decades.