BEIJING (AP):
Two men rammed a dump truck into a group of jogging policemen and then tossed explosives into their barracks yesterday, killing 16 officers and wounding others in China's restive Central Asian border province, the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported.
The attack in Xinjiang province came just four days before the start of the Beijing Olympics, an event that has put security forces nationwide on alert and that at least one militant Muslim group has vowed to disrupt. Xinhua, citing local police, called it a "suspected terrorist attack''.
Xinhua said the attackers struck at 8 a.m., plowing into the policemen performing morning exercises outside the Yijin Hotel next to their paramilitary border patrol station in Kashgar city.
After the truck hit an electrical pole, the pair jumped out, threw homemade explosives at the barracks and "also hacked the policemen with knives", the report said.
Fourteen died on the spot and two others en route to a hospital while at least 16 others were wounded, Xinhua said.
Police arrested the two attackers, one of them having been injured in the leg, the report said.
Investigation under way
Local government officials declined comment yesterday. An officer in the district police department said an investigation was launched.
The attack was one of the deadliest and most brazen in recent years in Xinjiang province, where local Muslims have waged a sporadically violent rebellion against Chinese rule.
Kashgar, or Kashi in Chinese, is a tourist city that was once an oasis trading centre on the Silk Road caravan routes and lies 80 miles (130 kilometres) from the border with Pakistan, Afghanistan and Kyrgyzstan.
Chinese security forces have been on edge for months, citing a number of foiled plots by Muslim separatists and a series of bombings around China in the run-up to the Olympics, which opens Friday.
Last week, a senior military commander said radical Muslims who are fighting for what they call an independent East Turkistan in Xinjiang posed the single greatest threat to the games.
