BEIJING (AP) China has sentenced three men to death over a June attack in the restive northwestern region of Xinjiang blamed on Islamic extremists in which 24 police and civilians were killed.
The official Xinhua News Agency said Friday that another man was sentenced to 25 years in prison for his role in the June 26 violence, in which 13 militants were also killed. All four were found guilty of murder and being members of a terrorist organization and sentenced Thursday by the intermediate court in the city of Turfan at the end of a one-day trial.
All were identified by names common among Xinjiang's indigenous Turkic Uighur (WEE'ger) minority group, some members of which have pursued a long-simmering insurgency against Chinese rule in the vast region bordering on Central Asia.
In the incident, assailants attacked police and government offices in the eastern Xinjiang (shihn-jeeahng) town of Lukqun, in one of an unusually large number of bloody clashes over the summer. Independent reports put the Lukqun death toll at as high as 46.
Police said the attackers belonged to a 17-member extremist Islamic cell formed in January by a man identified by the Chinese pronunciation of his Uighur name, Aihemaitiniyazi Sidike.