CHINA:BEIJING'S SECURITY concerns ahead of the August Olympics are focusing increasingly on the restive western region of Xinjiang, after official media said security officials had thwarted efforts by suspected terrorists to crash an aircraft from Urumqi to the capital.
In a separate report, a Chinese official said a suspected militant separatist group in Xinjiang, raided by police on January 27th, was planning to sabotage the Beijing Games, a Chinese official said.
China has fought to contain separatist efforts by militant Uighurs in Xinjiang, which is home to eight million Uighurs and is where China gets much of its oil and gas.
Some Uighur separatists, who share cultural and ethnic heritage with other Central Asian Turkic peoples, have called for the mainly Muslim republic to become an independent republic of "East Turkestan".
In the raid near Urumqi, which took place on January 27th this year, two people were killed and 15 arrested.
"Their aim was very clear. Specifically to sabotage the staging of the Beijing Olympics," said the communist leader in the region, Wang Lequan.
It was the latest in a series of attacks on what the government describes as terrorist gangs. On January 2007, Chinese forces killed 18 people in a gun battle near a training camp in the mountains of the Pamirs plateau in southern Xinjiang.
"Those terrorists, saboteurs and secessionists are to be battered resolutely, no matter what ethnic group they are from," said Mr Wang.
In the attempting hijacking, the China Southern Airlines aircraft took off at 10.35am and landed in Lanzhou, capital of neighbouring Gansu Province, at 12.40pm on Friday, before flying on to Beijing.
"Some people were attempting to create an air disaster . . . but were stopped by air police," said Nur Bekri, chairman of the Xinjiang regional government, on the sidelines of the National People's Congress, the country's annual parliament.
"Who the people involved in the incident were, where they were from, what their aim was and what their background was, we are now investigating," he said.
"But we can be sure that this was a case of intending to create an air crash."
An airline official told Xinhua he could not confirm whether the incident was a terror attack, saying it was a police matter.
The crew and air police reported the incident to the control tower, and landed in Lanzhou under the instruction of the tower, said an aviation offical.
The suspects are in custody in Lanzhou, an official with the Xinjiang regional government said, without giving the number of suspects.