THREE bombs which exploded on the Nos 2, 10 and 44 buses running through the north west Chinese city of Urumqi on Tuesday were almost certainly planted by Muslim separatists intent on killing ethnic Chinese residents, who make up 80 per cent of the population of one million, according to reports from the region.
The devices killed at least four people, injured 60, and jolted the composure of the Chinese leadership in the sensitive aftermath of the death of Deng Xiaoping by raising the prospect of a "Chechnya" inside Chinese borders.
The explosions in Urumqi, the farthest city in the world from any ocean, were most likely timed for the day of the Chinese leader's funeral, to show the world that President Jiag Zemin had not inherited a united country.
Urumqi is the capital of Xinjiang province, a vast territory of mountains and deserts in central Asia which has been subjected to repeated Chinese invasions for almost 20 centuries.
Like the Russian province of Chechnya which has fought a bloody pro independence war since the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, it has a large Muslim population which has never completely given its loyalty to the central government.
There was serious rioting one February 5th-6th in another city of Xinjiang province which left nine Chinese people dead and 198 wounded.
Foreign reporters are barred from Urumqi, but local people interviewed by telephone and exile groups in neighbouring Kazakhstan spoke of anger at executions of local Muslims by the Chinese authorities last year.
The real purpose of the explosions is most likely to terrorise the population of Han Chinese who have been coming to the remote province in large numbers since the late 1940s when the Communist government took over what was then the independent eastern Turkestan Republic.
The province had a 90 per cent non Chinese population in 1955, but half of the 15 million people living there now are Han Chinese, China's majority people, with the remainder made up of 13 national minorities, the biggest of which is the Turkish speaking Muslim Uighurs.
Chinese leaders this week expressed concern over the threat from Islamic fundamentalism, according to the Israeli Foreign Minister, Mr David Levy, who met President Jiang Zemin, the Prime Minister, Mr Li Peng, the Foreign Minister, Mr Qian Qichen, and the Vice Premier, Mr Li Lanqing, during a three day visit to Beijing ending yesterday.
"The issue came up in the talks. I think we have a very similar view on this," he told a news conference before leaving. "Every attempt to turn religion into a weapon becomes extremely dangerous, it is something that knows no boundaries. It is like sand, it can be transported by the wind from one place to another."
Police mounted extra patrols in Urumqi, a city of concrete block architecture which boasts a 383 room Holiday Inn and some Swiss type scenery nearby, residents said.
"I think at least four to five people were killed, including one child who died instantly," a Xinjiang television station official told Reuter in Beijing.
"The No 44 bus exploded near the agricultural bank," said a young Uighur woman. "A trishaw driver was killed, he was lying on the ground covered with blood. All the windows of the bus were broken. Residents were ordered to stay at home or at their units. We are terrified. Many people go to work by taxi or buses provided by the units." The second bomb tore the roof off the No 2 bus, and the third wrecked a No 10 bus.
Last year there were attacks on officials and pro Beijing Muslim leaders in the province, which borders Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kyrgystan, Kazakhstan, Russia and Mongolia.
The Chinese first conquered Xinjiang between AD 73 and AD 97 and held it intermittently until Beijing rule was secured by the Qing dynasty after 1644. Following the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911 the province was ruled by warlords. The east Turkestan Republic was set up in the 1940s. Most anti China Muslim leaders were killed in a plane crash in 1949 when on their way for talks with the new communist government in Beijing.