16 chinese military police killed; beijing tightens security measures for games

Two men armed with knives and explosives ambushed a armed forces police unit in China's bulk Muslim northwestern United States Monday morn, killing 16 military officer and wound 16 others earlier being arrested in what the state media called the deadliest terrorist onslaught in China since the early 1990s.

The assault took place 3,400 kilometers, or 2,100 miles, from Peking, but just four days earlier the start of the Olympic Games, adding to the authorization' concerns as 100 of one thousand of foreign athletes, journalists and spectators began to arrive, greeted by the biggest security operation in the history of the Games.

Chinese leaders say these Olympic Games will be safe. But they warn that act of terrorism is a constant quantity threat, peculiarly from Moslem separatist grouping in the Sinkiang region of horse opera China.

China, eager to avert any possibility of an onslaught during the Games, has girded Beijing with soldiers, missile launchers and pavement cameras. The heavy surveillance did not prevent a small protestation near Tiananmen Square on mon by people who said they had not been compensated after their homes were demolished for a renovation project, but a swarm of police force officers quickly broke it up.

Security officials say they remain confident the events will take place without incident.

"We are prepared to deal with any kind of security threat, and we are confident we will have a safe and peaceful Olympic Games," said Sun Weide, a spokesman for the Peking Organizing commission.

The assault took place at dawn in the oasis city of Kashgar, as a brigade of border patrol military officer jogged exterior their barracks near the city centre.

Officials suggested that the aggressor were associated with a murky separationist movement quest independence for the Uigur minority, a Turkic-speaking Muslim people who dominate the Sinkiang Uighur Autonomous Region. Item were reported by Xinhua, the official news agency, and could not be independently verified Monday.

According to those accounts, two men driving a dump truck rammed their vehicle into the jogging soldiers, killing or wounding 10. The attackers jumped out of the truck, stabbing the soldiers with knives, and then lobbed homemade bombs at the barracks, although they exploded outside the compound, Xinhua said. The police arrested the attackers, whom they described as Uighurs, 28 and 33 years old, but did not release their names.

Xinhua said the arm of one man was badly wounded when an explosive device detonated in his hand. The police later discovered 10 more such devices and what it described as a "home-made gun" in the dump truck.

Images reportedly taken from local Kashgar television and briefly posted on the Internet showed bodies shrouded in white sheets or on stretchers. The attack, however, received no mention on the evening news in Beijing.

In recent years, China has waged an increasingly muscular battle against those it describes as radical Muslims. The East Turkestan Islamic Movement, a group listed as a terrorist organization by the United States and China, is blamed for much of the violence in Xinjiang. The attacks, as recounted by the Chinese government, often involve bombings targeting police stations, public buses, factories and oil pipelines.

Human rights advocates say the official accounts are often exaggerated to justify wide-ranging crackdowns on Uighur advocates of all stripes. Dilxat Raxit, a spokesman for the World Uyghur Congress, an exile group based in Germany, said the Chinese government had been systematically repressing the culture and religion of Xinjiang residents, and that such policies were radicalizing a growing number of people. "These policies are forcing more Uighurs to turn to more militant protest," he said.

Chinese security strategists have cited groups like the East Turkestan Islamic Movement as the greatest threat to the Olympics. At a news conference last week, officials said a crackdown on Uighur separatists this year had led to the arrest of 82 people who they said had been plotting to disrupt the Games through acts of terrorism.

Last month, the authorities executed two men and meted out heavy sentences to 15 others who they said were members of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement. The men were seized during a raid on what officials said was as a terrorist training camp. Also last month, the police raided an apartment in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, and shot and killed five men who they said were planning a "holy war" against the region's ethnic Han population.

The official media has publicized other acts in recent months, including what the authorities said was a thwarted attack by three airline passengers who were planning to crash a Beijing-bound plane. The suspects were armed with containers of gasoline, according to Xinhua.