Unrest hits China’s Muslim-dominated Xinjiang region

Beijing, June 29 (IANS) More than 100 people riding motorcycles, some of them wielding knives, attacked a police station in western China’s Muslim-majority region of Xinjiang, media reports said.

Details of Friday’s incident in the desert city of Hotan emerged Saturday, BBC reported.

It came two days after clashes in another part of Xinjiang left at least 35 people dead.

At a meeting in Xinjiang’s capital Urumqi, senior Communist Party official Yu Zhengsheng said China “would strike hard on violent terrorist attacks”.

“We will step up the actions to crack down upon terrorist groups and extremist organisations and track the wanted,” he said.

Xinjiang has seen sporadic outbreaks of violence fuelled by ethnic tension.

The Muslim Uighur community makes up about 45 percent of the population in the region, which borders central Asia. Many Uighurs feel that an influx of Han Chinese has left them and their culture marginalised.

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