The Chinese Foreign Ministry said evidence suggested terrorist groups may have been involved in a series of attacks that killed dozens of people in Xinjiang.
State-run media have described the attackers as “terrorists,” but officials said it was too early to determine whether they were connected to militant organizations.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang (秦剛) said on Wednesday: “As to the recent terrorist attacks and whether they have any links with the terrorist forces, there is some evidence showing that behind these attacks there might be East Turkestan forces.”
Qin did not elaborate on what evidence might link the attackers to terrorist groups.
Other officials have said, however, that some of the weapons used in the attacks were similar to those they allege were found in raids last year on a training base of a group called the East Turkestan Islamic Movement.
However, some analysts were skeptical about the claims that terror groups were involved.
Yitzhak Shichor, a political scientist at the University of Haifa in Israel, said China effectively crushed the terror networks within its borders in the 1990s.
The recent assaults “are not the kind of coordinated terror attacks that are being orchestrated by some kind of organization inside or outside of China,” Shichor said. “It seems like individual acts of revenge.”
So far, no group has claimed responsibility for the attacks.
The violence began on Aug. 4 in Kashgar, near the border with Afghanistan and Pakistan. Two men stole a truck and rammed it into a group of police on their morning jog. The men continued the attack with homemade bombs and knives, killing 16 police.
Six days later, bombers struck in Kuqa, reportedly killing two.
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