URUMQI, China, Sept. 18 (UPI) -- As many as 12 people were killed in a police raid on an alleged Uighur terrorist center in western China, officials and local residents say.
The raid in the Uighur Xinjiang Autonomous Region occurred Aug. 23 but was not reported for several weeks, Radio Free Asia said. Another police action three days earlier reportedly killed 22 people who were holding prayers in a house.
The Uighurs are ethnically Turkic and are mostly Muslim. The region was incorporated into China several centuries ago.
Nurmemet Tunyaz, a local Communist Party official and head of Jigdejay, the village where the raid on the alleged terrorist center took place, said he was told six people were killed and 20 injured. But he said the actual death toll could be twice that.
"I do not know the details but I have heard that they were making explosives and training in an excavated area," he said in an interview with RFA's Uighur Service. "We did not hear that any police were killed in this shooting. The injured suspects were transported to the county hospital but those killed were buried on the spot."
