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BEIJING — An Islamic group said to be tied to Al Qaeda has claimed responsibility in an online video for recent violent attacks that killed dozens in China’s western Xinjiang region, an organization that tracks militant activity has said.
The SITE Intelligence Group said Wednesday that the video, by the little-known Turkestan Islamic Party, was issued in late August. In it, the group’s leader, Abdul Shakoor Damla, is reported to claim that attacks in July in Hotan and Kashgar, two southern Xinjiang cities, were acts of revenge against China’s government for its repression of the region’s ethnic Uighur population.
The Uighurs, a Turkic group, once were the majority in sparsely populated Xinjiang, but have been edged out by China’s majority Han population as Beijing has moved to exploit the area’s mineral resources and develop its economy. A July 2009 protest march by Uighurs in the capital, Urumqi, exploded into ethnic rioting that killed nearly 200 people, most said to be Han.
Government surveillance and police actions directed at Uighurs have risen sharply since then, and the area has experienced sporadic outbreaks of violence. China’s government says its economic development efforts have brought prosperity and jobs to Xinjiang Uighurs and blames all unrest on outside agitators and foreign-based terrorist groups.
Many terrorism analysts have called those claims overblown, but they say that the Turkestan Islamic Party appears to be a genuine group whose threats should be taken seriously.
The latest video includes footage showing a Uighur man identified as Memeti Tiliwaldi at what is said to be a terrorist training camp, probably somewhere in Afghanistan or in Pakistan’s lawless region near the China border. The Chinese police reported in early August that they had shot and killed Mr. Tiliwaldi, 29, after he was identified as one of those who staged a series of attacks in Kashgar on July 30 and 31 that left at least 18 persons dead.
At the time, the authorities said the attackers had prepared for the attacks at a training camp inside Pakistan. Xinjiang has been under a security crackdown since early July,when an attack and battle at a police station in Hotan killed another 18 persons, most identified as Uighur attackers.
Little is known about the Turkestan Islamic Party, which may have been formed early last decade but first became well known for threats to disrupt the 2008 Beijing Olympics with chemical, biological and conventional weapons attacks. In January 2010, the group issued a statement claiming that 15 of its members died in a U.S. airstrike inside Afghanistan.
The group has also claimed responsibility for other violence in China, including an explosion on a Shanghai bus that killed three persons and attacks in the coastal cities of Wenzhou and Guangzhou, but the Chinese government has dismissed those claims.
China has frequently credited a group called the East Turkestan Islamic Movement for violence in Xinjiang. The Turkestan Islamic Party appears to be a separate organization, although some analysts say the two may be related
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