China Reports Two Policemen Killed in Latest Xinjiang Unrest
Xinhua is reporting on an attack on police in Xinjiang, in which two officers were killed and five injured. From AFP:
Assailants stabbed the police officers late on Wednesday night in a town close to Kashgar, a city in the far west of Xinjiang where the deadliest of this month’s attacks took place, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
“Suddenly, many criminal suspects that had been hiding in a cornfield came out from behind and attacked using knives,” Xinhua said, citing local police.
Xinhua gave few other details but US-funded Radio Free Asia reported the police were ambushed while searching the cornfield following a tip that a woman suspected of helping assailants in an earlier attack was hiding there.
This Xinhua report appears to be about an incident in Ying’erlike Township, Shule County, Kashgar, that occurred while police were investigating the previous attack reported Wednesday in Jiashi County, though both incidents apparently happened in corn fields:
Police encountered nine suspects in a corn field in Ying’erlike Township, Shule County, Kashi Prefecture, on Friday evening, said a spokesman with Kashi police department.
The knife-wielding suspects tried to resist the police and put up a “desperate struggle”, injuring a militia man and an armed soldier, the spokesman said.
The police fought back and shot and killed six people. The other three were injured and arrested, he said.
