BEIJING : Chinese police suspect terrorists were behind an attack early Monday in China's Muslim-populated far northwest that left 16 police officers dead.
State media said two armed drove a lorry into the station in the Xinjiang city of Kashgar, throwing two grenades, which exploded, killing 16 and injuring 16 others, the Xinhua news agency reported.
The attackers were arrested about 8:00 am (0000 GMT), according to the agency.
Initial reports were partly self-contradictory, with one earlier Xinhua dispatch saying two vehicles were involved.
In a separate report filed minutes earlier, Xinhua reported an explosion in Xinjiang, providing no further details. It was unclear if this referred to the attack on the police station.
"We don't have any information about it. We have not heard of this matter," a police spokesman in Xinjiang's capital Urumqi told AFP when contacted about the initial report about the explosion. He declined to give his name.
China has warned repeatedly of a major terrorist threat emanating from Xinjiang, saying that militants there were planning to attack the Olympics.
"The Beijing Olympics is facing a terrorist threat unsurpassed in Olympic history," the People's Daily, the mouthpiece of the ruling Communist Party, said in an editorial last month.
However rights groups and members of the ethnic Muslim Uighur population in Xinjiang have accused the government of exggerating the threat as cover to crackdown on all forms of dissent.
Xinjiang, a vast area that borders Central Asia, has about 8.3 million Uighurs, and many are unhappy with what they say has been six decades of repressive Chinese rule.
China has deployed more than 100,000 security personnel to provide security for the Games, which begin on Friday and end on August 24.
A senior official said last week the main Olympic threats were from the East Turkestan Islamic Movement in Xinjiang, separatist forces seeking Tibetan independence, the banned Falungong spiritual group and overseas pro-democracy forces.
Spokespeople for the Beijing Olympics organising committee were not immediately available to comment on Monday's raid.
