BEIJING: At least 27 people were killed and three others were injured in riots in China’s restive far western Xinjiang region on Wednesday, the government news agency Xinhua said.
Xinhua said that gangs armed with knives attacked a police station and a local government building on Wednesday in the remote township of Lukqun, about 200 km southeast of Urumqi.
“Gangs attacked Lukqun’s police stations, the local government building and a construction site, stabbing people and setting fire to police vehicles,” Xinhua quoted regional Communist Party officials as saying.
“Nine policemen and security guards and eight civilians were killed before police shot dead 10 of the attackers,” Xinhua quoted the officials as saying.
The reasons for the attacks were not immediately clear.
The unrest in the region, home to a large Muslim Uighur minority, was the deadliest since July 2009, when nearly 200 people were killed in riots pitting Uighurs against ethnic Chinese in the region’s capital Urumqi.
