Sixteen police officers have been killed and 16 others injured this morning after a Chinese border station was attacked with grenades and officers hacked with knives in what appears to be the country's worst terrorist attack in a decade.
Just days before the start of the Beijing Olympics, attackers drove a dump truck at a group of jogging officers at a patrol station in the Xinjiang province.
"The two attackers got off the lorry after the vehicle veered to hit on a roadside wire pole," said the English-language report from the state-run Xinhua News Agency. "They threw two grenades to the barracks, causing explosion. They also hacked the policemen with knives."
"This is the most serious incident recorded in years," a Human Rights Watch spokesman said. "Ahead of the Olympics, it is a very powerful symbolic attack because security in Xinjiang is at an all-time high."
The attack was in Kashgar, an area where local Muslim Uighur have waged a sporadic rebellion against Chinese rule. Local police suspect it was a "terrorist attack", said the report.
It came just four days before the start of the Beijing Olympics - an event that at least one radical Muslim group has vowed to attack. Police "got clues suggesting that the 'East Turkestan Islamic Movement' planned to make terrorist attacks during Aug. 1-8, just ahead of the opening of the Olympic Games in Beijing," Xinhua reported.
The brief Xinhua account said the attackers drove the dump truck to get inside the paramilitary police compound in the Kashgar area and then exploded two grenades. A state television report gave a different version, saying the police were attacked while marching in front of a hotel while conducting morning drills. (Daily Mail)
