Saibal Dasgupta | TNN

Beijing: The Chinese police is investigating possible links between the attackers involved in Sunday’s blasts that killed 12 people in the restive Xinjiang province and an al-Qaida group. The attackers who targetted supermarkets, hotels and government offices in Kuqa town with homemade bombs in the early hours of Sunday included two women.
The police said seven of the 10 persons killed were terrorists. Four of the terrorists had committed suicide and rest shot dead by policemen responding to the attacks. A policemen and a passer-by were also killed.
The attack, which follows the killing of 16 policemen in another part of Xinjiang province a week back, is being linked by the police to separatist groups that are fighting for an independent East Turkmenistan nation by splitting a part of China. The police had earlier claimed it had foiled plots by five of these separatist groups to sabotage Olympic facilities in Beijing, 3,000 kms away.
This is a rare instance of women being involved in a movement run by the Muslim minority Uyghur people, which has been going on for the past few decades.
“The terrorists were two women. One was injured. One was killed,” Mu Tielifuhasimu a government official, said. “The motive was just to create terror in society,” he said said. Three of the attackers were still on the run.
Mutiezhapu Hasimu, a Xinjiang government official said the attacks had been “organized”. “It is still under investigation whether it was connected with other organizations,” he said. “The terrorists that were killed and arrested were all Uyghurs and from Xinjiang.”
But there is still no clear evidence to show the Sunday's explosions were connected to the Kashgar incident.

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