Three knife-wielding attackers killed five people and injured another five in China’s region of Xinjiang before police killed the “thugs,” a regional gover
SHANGHAI – Three knife-wielding attackers killed five people and injured another five in China’s region of Xinjiang before police killed the “thugs,” a regional government said, the latest violence on China’s border with Central Asia.
The attack took place on Tuesday evening in Pishan County in the restive southern part of Xinjiang, the government of Hotan prefecture said in a short statement on its website early on Wednesday.
“At present, social order is normal at the site, society is stable, and investigation work is under way,” it said, without giving further details about the attackers or their motive.
Hundreds of people have been killed in recent years in resource-rich Xinjiang, on the borders of Central Asia, Pakistan, Afghanistan and India, in violence between members of the ethnic Uighur minority and majority Han Chinese.
The government has blamed much of the unrest on separatist Islamist militants, although rights groups and exiles say anger at Chinese controls on the religion and culture of Muslim Uighurs is more to blame for the violence.
