BEIJING (AP) — Two knife-wielding men hijacked a truck in China's restive northwest, then rammed the vehicle into a crowd and got out to attack the pedestrians, sparking clashes that killed seven people and injured 22, a police official said Sunday.
The attack happened in the Silk Road city of Kashgar in northwest Xinjiang, a region rocked by ethnic violence in recent years.
The attackers' identities and motive were unclear, but an overseas activist group said it worried Chinese authorities might crack down on minority Uighurs blamed for previous violence in the region.
State-run Xinhua News Agency reported that two blasts were heard about an hour before the incident Saturday night — one from a minivan and the other from the food stall-lined street where the hijacking took place. The police official, from the information office of the Xinjiang regional public security bureau, said she could not confirm whether there were explosions.
According to the official, two men hijacked a truck and stabbed the driver to death. The men then drove the truck into a crowd, got out of the vehicle and attacked people along the road with a knife or knives, said the official, who refused to give her name, as is common with Chinese officials.
People who came under attack retaliated, and one of the suspects was killed and the other caught, the official said.
A total of seven people died and 22 were injured, she said. Xinhua said six "innocent people" and one suspect were killed.
The official said the case was under investigation and that the motive was unclear.
Xinjiang has been beset by ethnic conflict and a sometimes-violent separatist movement by Uighurs, a largely Muslim ethnic group that sees Xinjiang as its homeland. Many Uighurs say they have been marginalized as more and more majority Han Chinese move into the region.
An overseas Uighur advocacy group said that according to information received from Uighurs in Kashgar, most of Saturday's dead and injured were members of a security force that helps the police maintain order.
"I am worried that authorities may detain more Uighurs by making use of this incident," Dilxat Raxit, spokesman for the Germany-based World Uyghur Congress, said in an email to The Associated Press.
It is the second fatal incident in Xinjiang in less than two weeks. On July 18, police shot 14 rioters who attacked a police station and killed four people in Hotan city, 300 miles (500 kilometers) southeast of Kashgar, Xinhua said.
In 2009, nearly 200 people in the region were killed in fighting between Uighurs and Han Chinese.
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AP researcher Henry Hou contributed to this report.
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