Grenade attack kills 16 policemen in Western China, Xinjiang Area

The Times Online, Aug. 4, 2008-

Sixteen policemen have been killed and sixteen more injured in an attack on a police station in far western China, in what appears to be the country’s worst terrorist incident in a decade.

The attack, on a border police office in the city of Kashgar in Muslim-dominated Xinjiang region, is a grave blow against the Chinese security forces just four days before the opening of the Beijing Olympics. Chinese leaders have identified Muslim separatists from the remote, desert region as the biggest threat to the security of the Games.

Details were still sketchy this morning, but according to the state Xinhua news agency, two attackers drove one or two lorries into a police station in the far western city of Kashgar, an oasis town on the ancient Silk Road. The building was a station of the border patrol armed police division, which is responsible for the nearby borders with Kyrgyzstan and Pakistan. In some reports it was unclear whether the attack occurred in the city of Kashgar or in the broad administrative region of which it is the capital……. (more details from The Times Online)