CHINA:Chinese police attacked and destroyed what they say is the country's first terrorist training camp, killing 18 suspected insurgents in a gun battle in the restive northwestern region of Xinjiang.
In one of the deadliest clashes with separatist Muslims in the remote desert region, police also arrested 17 suspected members of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) during the raid, which took place on Friday but was reported only this week.
The raid signals an intensified crackdown on anti-government elements in the province.
One policeman was killed and another wounded during the assault in the remote mountains of Pamirs plateau, close to the border with Pakistan, police spokeswoman Ba Yan said.
Officials seized 22 hand grenades and more than 1,500 others which were still being assembled, as well as guns and other home-made explosives. The terrorists were operating mines near the camp to fund their operations.
Beijing has claimed that 1,000 ETIM members received training from al-Qaeda. ETIM'S former leader, Hasan Mahsum, was shot dead by Pakistani troops in October 2003 during a joint operation by Pakistani and Afghan officials along the border.
Chinese police said he was suspected of plotting terrorist attacks in the Xinjiang capital, Urumqi, and in the Hotan region.
The scale of the operation and the ammunition found at the camp signals that the group could have mounted serious attacks, the police said. They were still hunting some suspects who escaped during the raid.
The largest province in China, Xinjiang accounts for 16 per cent of the country's land area and includes large deposits of oil and other natural resources. It has long been seen as a difficult territory to rule, defying efforts by Turkish warriors and Manchu warlords over the centuries, and there are periodic reports of bomb blasts in Xinjiang's cities carried out by Muslim separatists. Uighurs are the largest ethnic group, accounting for nine million of Xinjiang's 19 million population and small groups of secessionists have been calling for an independent East Turkestan since before the Chinese revolution in 1949.
A top Chinese security official said in September 2005 that separatists and other extremists in Xinjiang had been responsible for more than 260 terrorist incidents in the preceding 10 years, in which 160 people were killed and 440 injured. However, Amnesty International has raised concerns about Chinese mistreatment of the Uighurs, saying Beijing is using the "war on terror" to crack down on a largely peaceful independence movement.
There are calls for greater self-determination, but calls for outright Uighur independence are rare and any separatist moves have been crushed by force.
Rebiya Kadeer, a Muslim businesswoman turned activist for Uighur rights in Xinjiang, has been nominated for the Nobel peace prize this year. Ms Kadeer was jailed for five years for providing state secrets to foreigners before her exile.