China on heightened alert after fatal terrorist attack

CHINA has stepped up its already tight Olympics security in the wake of the suspected Islamic terrorist attack that killed 16 policemen.

The killings in a city near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border prompted Olympic organisers to stress that all precautions had been taken to ensure safety in Beijing and other Olympic venues when the games open on Friday.

"Security for the Olympic Games is of paramount importance. The more we give, the safer and more secure the residents will feel," said a police spokesman.

China has made safety a major priority for the Olympics, mobilising hundreds of thousands of police, military and local residents as part of a huge security net over the capital.

But the attack in Xinjiang underscored that with so much security focused on Beijing areas far from the capital make tempting targets.

Police tightened security checks on roads and public buses in the Xinjiang region today.

The official Xinhua News Agency reported that authorities reinforced the police presence on roads leading into Kashgar and ordered a full security alert in public places, including government office buildings, schools and hospitals.

In Xinjiang's capital of Urumqi, police checked residents' security cards during street patrols.

The 16 officers were killed and another 16 injured yesterday when two men rammed a dumper truck then hurled explosives at a group of jogging policemen.

Both men were captured alive. They are Uighurs, a mainly Muslim ethnic minority group, some of whom have waged a violent rebellion against Chinese rule.

Authorities have been calling the incident a suspected terrorist attack. Last month, an extremist Uighur group believed to be based across the mountainous border in Pakistan's tribal frontier threatened in a video to target the Olympics.

State broadcaster China Central Television said today that the two men, aged 28 and 33, had carefully planned the attack, stealing the truck and ramming it into a group of around 70 border patrol paramilitary police as they passed a hotel during a morning jog. They then hurled the explosives and attacked the policemen with knives.

One of the attackers lost a hand when the home-made explosives blew up.

Afterward, police recovered additional explosives, a gun, and "propaganda materials about a holy war," state media said.

The attack followed years of intensive security measures in Xinjiang. A wave of violence in the 1990s mainly targeted police, officials and Uighurs seen as collaborators. Also in the 1990s, separatists also staged nearly simultaneous explosions on three public buses in the provincial capital of Urumqi.