22 killed in attack on farmers’ market in Xinjiang region

Twenty-two people were killed when four Uighur assailants armed with knives and explosives attacked a market in Xinjiang province last week, as ethnic tensions continued to worsen in the northwestern region.

The dead included police officers and the four attackers. The attack, on October 12th, took place at a farmers' trading centre in Maralbeshi, or Bachu, county in the Kashgar prefecture, the US-based Radio Free Asia's Uighur-language service reported. The wholesale food market is used predominantly by Han Chinese.

Xinjiang is home to more than 10 million Turkic-speaking Uighurs, a Turkic Muslim ethnic group that has close linguistic and cultural links to central Asia.

Violence in the region has intensified in the past two years, and hundreds have died, including more than 200 people in the past year. Beijing blames this on Islamist militants and separatists. In a "year-long campaign against terrorism", China has taken down more than 40 groups it alleges are terror gangs. Hundreds have been arrested in Xinjiang.

The past year has seen a rise in the number of attacks by separatists. In October last year, an SUV with three passengers drove into a group of tourists on Tiananmen Square, killing five. In March, 29 people were killed and 140 injured when eight knife-wielding assailants attacked the main train station in Kunming. In May this year, a suicide bombing killed 39 at a market in Xinjiang’s capital, Urumqi. In July, scores were killed in Yarkand, and last week, 12 people were sentenced to death for their part in the assault.