MidnightWatcher – Prophecy in Motion

Reuters – “A confrontation involving axes, knives, at least one gun and ending with the burning down of a house left 21 people dead in China’s troubled far-west region of Xinjiang, a government spokeswoman said on Wednesday, calling it a ‘terrorist attack’.

It was the deadliest violence in the region since July 2009, when Xinjiang’s capital, Urumqi, was rocked by clashes between majority Han Chinese and minority Uighurs that killed nearly 200 people.

Nine residents, six police and six ethnic Uighurs were killed in Tuesday’s drama, said Hou Hanmin, spokeswoman for the Xinjiang government.

It was not immediately clear how many burnt to death.

Hou did not name any group, but China has blamed previous attacks in energy-rich Xinjiang – strategically located on the borders of Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Central Asia – on Islamic separatists who want to establish an independent East Turkestan.

Many Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim people native to Xinjiang, chafe at Chinese controls on their religion, language and culture.

Three ‘community workers’ were patrolling a neighborhood of Bachu County, known as Maralbexi by Uighurs, in Kashgar after a tip-off that there were ‘suspicious people’ in a private house, Hou said.

One of the three used a phone to call for help after they found a number of knives, resulting in their being killed by 14 Uighur ‘rioters’ in the house, Hou said.

‘The community people were just conducting regular checks, but the action from the rioters was planned and well prepared,’ Hou said. ‘It’s certainly a terrorist attack.'” Read more.

Flashback: China: Rioters Shout ‘Allah is the Only God’ While Hacking People to Death – “Police shot down 14 rioters who attacked a police station in Hotan city of Northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region on Monday, a Communist Party official in Hotan said Wednesday. The official, who declined to be named, said the attack left four people dead, including an armed police officer, a security guard, a woman and a teenage girl. At least three others were injured… Shouting frantic religious slogans like ‘Allah the only God’, the rioters ran to the top floor and police opened fire to stop them, said an anonymous policeman with the police station.” Read more.