THE GUARDIAN: Protests over deaths of workers turn violent as mobs burn buses and attack residents from minorities in western province
Three people were killed during rioting in the western Chinese region of Xinjiang, as thousands of Muslim Uighurs took to the streets during the biggest display of ethnic unrest in recent memory.
The protesters smashed up buses, threw stones through shop windows and assaulted Han Chinese passers-by, according to a witness, who said the spark was the recent killing of Uighur migrant workers in Guangdong, southern China.
Xinhua, the state news agency, said those killed were "three ordinary people of the Han ethnic group." It did not say how they died.
Vehicles were set on fire and traffic guard rails overturned. Bloodied victims were rushed to hospital in the regional capital, Urumqi, as armed riot police moved in to restore order with tear gas, armoured vehicles and road blocks, according to a foreign student in Xinjiang.
A large section of Urumqi was shut off to vehicles tonight , with police manning roadblocks at the perimeter. Witnesses reported large numbers of armed officers inside the cordon. Mobile phone networks appeared to get cut off sporadically.
"There were big ethnic riots - there was a lot of fighting," said one Han resident. "It's not safe – you can't go anywhere near there. They've blocked it all off. You have to be careful." >>> Tania Branigan in Urumqi and Jonathan Watts in Beijing | Sunday, July 05, 2009
