China says militants still at large in northwest
Source: Reuters
BEIJING, Jan 9 (Reuters) - China said on Tuesday that the hunt was still on for terrorists at large, adding they had links to international forces, a day after it disclosed details of a massive raid in its Central Asian border region of Xinjiang. Police killed 18 people the government described as terrorists and captured another 17 in the raid on a training camp in the Pamirs plateau in southern Xinjiang that it said was run by the East Turkestan Islamic Movement. "At present, some terrorists are still at large. The Public Security department is pursuing them," Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao told a regular news conference. "We have evidence that East Turkestan groups are connecting with international terrorist forces and plan to conduct terrorist activities," he said. Oil-rich Xinjiang is home to 8 million Uighurs, a Turkic, largely Islamic people, many of whom resent the growing Han Chinese presence in the region and government controls on their religion and culture. China has accused Uighurs in the region of using violence to agitate for an independent East Turkestan state, but human rights groups say it has used its support for the U.S.-led war on terror to justify a crackdown on Uighurs characterised by arbitrary arrests and closed-door trials. Liu did not disclose the ethnicity of those in the camp, but said the raid was made "in accordance with the law". Authorities were still investigating whether the suspects had links to al Qaeda, Liu said, adding that a stash of hand grenades were found at the site, in a remote part of Xinjiang, near the Pakistan and Afghanistan borders. Police spokesman Wu Heping pledged that authorities would take tough measures to deal with terror attacks, indicating that there may be more raids in Xinjiang. "In order to protect the stability of our border regions and the safety of people and property, the police will keep a close watch on this issue and continue to take strong measures ... to strike against all criminal activities of terrorist groups," Wu told a news conference. China has also taken a leading role in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, a regional grouping of China, Russia and Central Asian nations that takes the fight against "extremism, separatism and terrorism" as one of its main tasks. Liu said China would work with Central Asian border countries in the interest of safeguarding peace and stability in the region. (Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard)
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