BEIJING – At least 21 people were killed on Tuesday in fighting in far western China between security officers and “gangsters” who had taken hostages, according to a propaganda bureau spokesperson for the regional government of Xinjiang, where the conflict took place.
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Six of those killed were gangsters, and eight more people in the gang were detained during the violence, according to accounts from the bureau and a report Wednesday on a regional news Web site. The other 15 killed were police officers and community watch workers or volunteers. They died after the large gang herded them at knifepoint into a house and set the building on fire, said the the propaganda spokesperson, who gave only her surname, Ms. Hou.
The death toll was the highest reported in violence in Xinjiang in many many months. Xinjiang is a vast western region that encompasses many ethnicities and landscapes, and violence flares on occasion in the regional capital, Urumqi, or along a belt of southern oases towns that are inhabited mostly by Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking people who often complain about governance and discrimination by the ethnic Han, who rule China. Sometimes the violence is clearly rooted in ethnic conflict, and other times it involves criminal gangs or attacks by individuals or groups against state organizations.
As with many such events in Xinjiang, details of the fighting on Tuesday remained murky even a full day after the violence had transpired. Some elements of the official accounts were bizarre.
The accounts called the assailants both " violent gangsters” and “terrorists.”
The violence took place in a village in Bachu County, near the remote Silk Road oasis town of Kashgar. It began on Tuesday when a person called a local government office saying there was suspicious activity in a neighboring house. Three community watch workers then went to check the house, and found people there with a large stockpile of knives, Ms. Hou said. The workers called the police, but then were then taken hostage.
[h=4]Connect With Us on Twitter[/h]Follow @nytimesworld for international breaking news and headlines.
Twitter List: Reporters and Editors
Six of those killed were gangsters, and eight more people in the gang were detained during the violence, according to accounts from the bureau and a report Wednesday on a regional news Web site. The other 15 killed were police officers and community watch workers or volunteers. They died after the large gang herded them at knifepoint into a house and set the building on fire, said the the propaganda spokesperson, who gave only her surname, Ms. Hou.
The death toll was the highest reported in violence in Xinjiang in many many months. Xinjiang is a vast western region that encompasses many ethnicities and landscapes, and violence flares on occasion in the regional capital, Urumqi, or along a belt of southern oases towns that are inhabited mostly by Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking people who often complain about governance and discrimination by the ethnic Han, who rule China. Sometimes the violence is clearly rooted in ethnic conflict, and other times it involves criminal gangs or attacks by individuals or groups against state organizations.
As with many such events in Xinjiang, details of the fighting on Tuesday remained murky even a full day after the violence had transpired. Some elements of the official accounts were bizarre.
The accounts called the assailants both " violent gangsters” and “terrorists.”
The violence took place in a village in Bachu County, near the remote Silk Road oasis town of Kashgar. It began on Tuesday when a person called a local government office saying there was suspicious activity in a neighboring house. Three community watch workers then went to check the house, and found people there with a large stockpile of knives, Ms. Hou said. The workers called the police, but then were then taken hostage.