Ethnic religious extremists armed with home-made weapons attacked a police station in China's restive far west earlier this week in a planned siege that ended with 14 of the 18 attackers dead, China said Wednesday in a new detailed account of the violence.
State media variously have blamed terrorists, rioters or thugs for Monday's violence in the Xinjiang region. An exile group that advocates for greater Uighur autonomy instead has said a peaceful protest turned into a bloody clash between police and demonstrators.
Xinjiang has been beset by ethnic conflict and a sometimes-violent separatist movement by Uighurs (pronounced WEE'-gurs), a largely Muslim ethnic group that sees Xinjiang as its homeland. Many Uighurs resent the Han Chinese majority as interlopers.
A group of "religious extremists" opposed to the Chinese government arrived two days earlier in Hotan and organised the terror attack in the city, a Xinjiang regional government spokeswoman told The Associated Press.
"They arrived in groups on the 16th with several dozen different knives including cleavers, axes and switchblades," the spokeswoman, Hou Hanmin, said. "They also went to a local market to buy other knives and materials to make molotov cocktails and home-made bombs."