Chinese arrest 18 people over fatal attack

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By Geoff Dyer in Beijing

Wednesday, August 06, 2008
  

A Chinese official said yesterday that police had arrested 18 members of a separatist terrorist group who had been trained outside of China as the authorities stepped up Olympics security following Monday's deadly attack in a western Chinese city.

Two men on Monday used knives and explosives to kill 16 police officers and injure 16 more in the predominantly Uighur Muslim city of Kashgar in one of the worst incidents of political violence in China for a decade.

However the authorities offered conflicting accounts of the attack, with one official describing it as the act of a “jihadi” terrorist group, while another said there was no link yet to terrorism.

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The incident is a huge embarrassment to the Chinese authorities ahead of the Beijing Olympics, which start on Friday and which were supposed to present an image of national harmony, although the attack has helped justify the heavy security measures.

The two men who conducted the attack were identified as a 33-year-old vegetable peddler and a 28-year-old taxi driver, both Muslim Uighurs from Kashgar, the former Silk Road city which is known in Chinese as Kashi.

The head of the Communist party in Kashgar said the attack had the hallmarks of the East Turkistan Islamic Movement, an organisation labelled as a terrorist group by both the US State Department and the United Nations.

“Religion is more important to them than their own life, and so they set out to perform jihad,” said Shi Dagang at a press conference in Kashgar.

Mr Shi said 18 suspected terrorists arrested this year had received training outside of China, however he gave no details of their nationality or the timing of their arrests.

However, analysts said the primitive weapons used, which appear to be home-made grenades and machetes, did not indicate the attackers had received organised training.