China Says Its Forces Killed 12 During Xinjiang Mayhem

BEIJING — Twelve of the nearly 200 people killed July 5 during an ethnic riot in the city of Urumqi on July 5 were shot by Chinese security forces, the state news agency reported over the weekend. It was China’s first official accounting of the number of people killed by the police and paramilitary troops during the chaos in Urumqi, capital of the restive Xinjiang region.

Nur Bekri, the governor of Xinjiang, said policemen “resolutely shot 12 mobsters after firing guns into the air had no effects on these extremely vicious thugs,” Xinhua, the state news agency, reported Sunday. Mr. Bekri did not reveal the ethnicity of the shooting victims.

Chinese officials rarely give an accounting of people killed or injured by security forces during incidents deemed politically sensitive.

In the last two weeks, talk has spread quickly among ethnic Uighurs in Urumqi that Chinese security forces killed many Uighurs during the rioting, fueling anger toward the government.

Furthermore, many residents of Urumqi are denouncing the police and the local government for failing to halt the violence even though government officials say they knew beforehand that a protest was going to take place on July 5.

At least 197 people were killed and 1,721 injured during several hours of ethnic bloodletting in Urumqi, officials say. The vast majority of the victims were ethnic Han civilians who were pummeled or stabbed to death by young Uighurs, they say. In many cases, the heads of the Han victims were bashed in with sticks and stones.

The Han are the dominant ethnic group in China, but the Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking people who are mostly Sunni Muslim, are the largest ethnic group in Xinjiang. Many Uighurs say they face intense discrimination throughout Xinjiang.

Uighurs in Urumqi say the government has underestimated the number of Uighurs killed by security forces, and they assert that many Uighurs were killed by roving bands of Han vigilantes in the days that followed the July 5 rioting.

The government has given no estimate for the number of people killed or wounded in the revenge attacks. Hospital officials in Urumqi generally declined to allow foreign reporters to interview injured Uighurs, but allowed them to interview injured Han.

The Chinese government insists the attacks were organized and point to Rebiya Kadeer, an exiled Uighur businesswoman living in the Washington area, as the orchestrator. The government announced Sunday through a Xinhua report that violence had afflicted 50 locations around Urumqi by 9 p.m. on July 5. The government also said that the rioters appeared to have prepared caches of simple weapons in advance, and that women in black robes and headscarves issued “commands” to followers.

Though surveillance cameras are used to monitor the major avenues and plazas in Urumqi, the government has not released any tape from those cameras to show what actually happened on July 5.

An American teacher living in the Uighur quarter, Adam Grode, said in an interview that much of the violence he witnessed appeared to be spontaneous. He said clashes began after 7 p.m. when rock-throwing Uighur men and paramilitary troops with batons attacked each other as the troops were trying to contain a protest.

“It didn’t seem like there was anything organized about it,” Mr. Grode said of the violence.

Government officials also say that the police knew as early as 1 a.m. on July 5 that Uighurs were going to hold a protest in the city center. But angry Han residents say that there were few police officers in the heart of the Uighur bazaar during the rioting, and that police officers did not show up in many of the worst-hit neighborhoods until five hours after the killings began. By then, it was far too late to stop the murders.