BEIJING (AP) Eleven people were killed in an assault on a police station in China's northwestern region of Xinjiang, the local government said Sunday, the latest in a series of attacks pointing to growing unrest in the area.
Two auxiliary police officers and nine attackers were killed in the incident Saturday afternoon, the Xinjiang regional government said in a statement posted on its microblog.
It said the assailants used knives and axes in the attack in Bachu county's Serikbuya township, near the historic city of Kashgar, adding that two police officers were injured in the clash. Calls to government and police offices in the region rang unanswered Sunday.
U.S.-government funded broadcaster Radio Free Asia and a Uighur (pronounced WEE'-gur) activist said several of the young attackers were killed by a police special weapons and tactics team, despite appeals from residents who had gathered at the scene to take them alive.
"There were around 40 to 50 people gathered around the station. They shouted to the police not to shoot, capture them alive and try them," the broadcaster quoted an eyewitness as saying. The eyewitness was not identified because of the sensitivity of the matter.