URUMQI, China, Sept. 9 (UPI) -- A group calling itself Turkistan Islamic Party claimed the recent violence in Xinjiang region was its revenge against China's repression of the area's Uighurs.
The claim was made in an online video, reported by the SITE Intelligence monitoring group, based in the United States, which tracks such activities.
The attacks in July in China's western Xinjiang-Uighur region resulted in the deaths of dozens of people, The New York Times reported.
SITE said the video had been issued late last month. In it, the group's leader claimed the July incidents in the region's cities of Hotan and Kashgar were acts of revenge for the Chinese government's repression of the region's ethnic Uighur population.
The Times reported the Turkistan Islamic Party had previously made similar claims that have not yet been verified. Some terrorism experts expressed concern about the group's threats as its members have been linked to other Islamic militants, including al-Qaida.
Chinese analyst Zhao Guojun in a telephone interview with the Times said the group may have been responsible for the Xinjiang attacks, or its claim could have been made to blow a "trumpet for themselves" to increase its influence.
Zhao said the group is believed to have fewer than 100 members, most of them Turkic Uighurs, who were once in the majority in the mineral-rich region but who now have yielded that place to China's majority Hans.
In similar acts of ethnic violence in July 2009, about 200 people died in Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang-Uighur, which is close to Pakistan and several central and west Asian countries. Since then, China has increased its government surveillance and police actions, causing more resentment among the Uighurs.
China's official media had previously quoted authorities as blaming the Kashgar violence on Islamic extremists trained in Pakistan, which is a close ally of China.
The Times quoted some analysts as saying while the attacks in Hotan and Kashgar almost certainly were planned in advance, they didn't seem to be actions perpetrated by a sophisticated terrorist group.
