BEIJING - Chinese police said a bomb attack that killed 16 police in the restive western Xinjiang region on Monday was a "suspected terrorist" attack, four days ahead of the Beijing Olympic Games, state media reported.
The Xinhua news agency said two assailants drove a truck towards exercising border police officers in Kashgar, home of many Uighur people resentful of Chinese control of the region.
"One of the attackers drove a tip lorry to hit a team of more than 70 policeman who were jogging to pass the Yiquan Hotel in a regular morning exercise at about 8:00 a.m. (0:00 GMT)," said the English-language report.
"The other suspect threw an explosive towards the gate of the station. The driver then abandoned the lorry to throw (an) explosive at the policemen" after veering into a roadside pole, Xinhua said.
Sixteen police were killed, and another 16 wounded in one of the worst ever attacks by militants on Chinese soil.
Local police detained the two attackers on the spot, and had identified them as two ethnic Uighur men, aged 23 and 28. Police suspected it was a "terrorist attack" carried out using home-made explosive devices, the agency said.
Xinjiang's largely Muslim Uighurs have been a focus of China's stringent nationwide security in the run-up to the Games. Officials have said militants seeking an independent "East Turkestan" homeland are among the biggest threats.
Many Uighurs resent Chinese controls on religion and of the expanding ethnic Han Chinese presence in Xinjiang, a region rich in natural gas.
Some Uighur groups seek an independent homeland, and China has said militants have forged ties with al Qaeda, Hizb ut-Tahrir and other violent groups.
Xinhua earlier reported that the suspects had also "hacked the policemen with knives", but omitted the detail in a later report.
The driver "blew up" one of his arms, after igniting an explosive, Xinhua said, citing police, who had recovered 10 home-made explosives, a home-made hand gun and four knives from the vehicle.
Police had cleaned the site of the attack but bloodstains were seen on the sidewalk near the Yiquan Hotel, located more than 100 metres from the border police station, Xinhua said.
Police "got clues suggesting that the 'East Turkestan Islamic Movement' planned to make terrorist attacks during Aug. 1-8, just ahead of the opening of the Olympic Games in Beijing," the agency added.
Kashgar is a heavily Muslim market city of some 200,000 in Xinjiang's south. The Olympic relay torch passed through there in June under intense security. Officials there contacted by telephone gave no more details.
Senior Colonel Tian Yixiang, China's military officer in charge of Olympics security, said on Friday that "East Turkestan terrorist groups" were the biggest threat to Games security.
Nicholas Bequelin, a researcher for the monitoring group Human Rights Watch who has long studied Xinjiang, said the attack appeared to reflect rising volatility there despite years of harsh security measures.
"This is the most serious incident recorded in years," Bequelin said by telephone. "Ahead of the Olympics, it is a very powerful symbolic attack because security in Xinjiang is at an all-time high."
China has said it foiled terrorist plots targeting the Olympics and in the first six months of the year police detained dozens of people in Xinjiang for plotting to sabotage the Games, according to state media.
In March, authorities said they foiled an attempted attack onboard a flight to Beijing from Urumqi, the regional capital of Xinjiang.
But Beijing also recently denied claims by a group calling itself the Turkistan Islamic Party that it set off a series of bus bombings around the country.
Human rights critics and exiled Uighurs have said Beijing has exaggerated the threat of violence in Xinjiang and stirred discontent by extending the Han Chinese presence there. Uighurs now make up slightly less than half of Xinjiang's 20 million people, according to official statistics.
"This incident reflects the tensions and volatility in the region," said Bequelin.