Marketplace bombing kills 31 in East Turkestan

BEIJING — Assailants in two SUVs plowed through shoppers while setting off explosives on a busy street market in China's volatile northwestern region of Xinjiang (East Turkestan) on Thursday, the local officials said, killing 31 people and injuring more than 90.

The attack in the city of Urumqi was the bloodiest in a series of violent incidents that Chinese authorities have blamed on radical separatists from the country's Muslim Uighur minority. The Xinjiang regional government said in a statement that the early morning attack was "a serious violent terrorist incident of a particularly vile nature."

The two vehicles crashed through barriers at 7:50 a.m., drove right into the crowds while setting off explosives, the statement said.
The SUVs then crashed head-on and one of them exploded, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. It quoted an eyewitness as saying there were up to a dozen blasts in all.

It was not immediately clear who was responsible for the attack. Recent violence has been blamed on extremists seeking to overthrow Chinese rule in the region, which is home to the native Turkic-speaking Uyghurs but has seen large inflows from China's ethnic Han majority in recent decades.

The death toll was the highest for a violent incident in Xinjiang since days long riots in Urumqi in 2009 between Uighurs and Hans left almost 200 people dead. Thursday's attack also was the bloodiest single act of violence in Xinjiang in recent history

Violence is being fueled by discriminatory policies against uyghurs

And in March, 29 people were slashed and stabbed to death at a train station in the southern city of Yunnan blamed on Uyghur extremists bent on waging jihad.

Uyghur activists say the violence is being fueled by restrictive and discriminatory policies and practices directed at Uighurs and a sense that the benefits of economic growth have largely accrued to Chinese migrants while excluding Uighurs. The knowledge that Muslims elsewhere are rising up against their governments also seems to be contributing to the increased militancy.

Thursday's attack came two days after courts in Xinjiang sentenced 39 people to prison after being convicted of crimes including organizing and leading terrorist groups, inciting ethnic hatred, ethnic discrimination and the illegal manufacturing of guns.

Among those convicted Tuesday was 25-year-old Maimaitiniyazi Aini, who received five years in prison for inciting ethnic hatred and ethnic discrimination for comments he made in six chat groups involving 1,310 people, the Supreme Court said.

In another case, a Uighur man was jailed for 15 years after he preached jihad, or holy war, to his son and another young man, according to the court.