“After 56 days of continuous fighting, Xinjiang destroyed a violent terrorist gang directly under the command of a foreign extremist group”.
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Chinese leaders have intensified efforts to crack down on what they see as a budding separatist movement in Xinjiang led by Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim minority.
The killings took place over the course of a 56-day manhunt following an attack on a colliery in Aksu in September that left 16 people dead, said the Xinjiang regional government’s Tianshan web portal.
The Tianshan portal said police mobilised around 10,000 people of “various ethnic groups” to help in the search for the coal mine attackers.
Radio Free Asia, which first reported the attack on the coal mine about two months ago, had said that at least 50 people had died.
Western countries have always been reluctant to share intelligence with China or otherwise cooperate, saying China has provided little evidence to prove the existence of a cohesive militant threat and citing worries about possible human rights abuses in Xinjiang.
Exiled Uyghur groups and human rights activists say China’s repressive policies in Xinjiang, which include strict controls on Islam and Uyghur culture, have provoked the unrest.
BEIJING-Chinese authorities killed more than two dozen people in northwest China that they said had links to foreign extremist groups, according to official Chinese media on Friday.
“In 2008, members of the group began watching videos containing messages of religious extremism, gradually reinforcing their extreme beliefs”, the statement said.
Calls to the Xinjiang government seeking comment went unanswered. While the government often gives details about violence in Xinjiang, it is not uncommon for them not to report certain incidents at all.
Pictures carried on the Xinjiang government’s news website showed armed security forces crossing rivers and clambering up rocks in what looked like a remote part of the region.
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China says that it too is threatened by groups like Islamic State, which announced this week it had killed a Chinese hostage.
