MOSCOW, May 26 (RIA Novosti) – Beijing will launch a year-long campaign against terrorism after unidentified assailants in the western region of Xinjiang recently killed 39 people in a suicide attack, the Ministry of Public Security said.
“With Xinjiang as the center, and with cooperation from other provinces, we will start a year-long specialized hard-strike campaign against violent terrorism,” the ministry said in a statement over the weekend.
The announced crackdown would last until June 2015 and is aimed at “preventing the spread of religious extremism” from Xinjiang to the rest of China.
The statement came as a reaction to the government's concerns about terrorist threats to national security after a series of recent deadly attacks targeting civilians in Xinjiang, home of the mostly Muslim Uighur minority.
Two cars crashed Thursday morning into a crowd of shoppers at a market near Renmin Park in downtown Urumqi, Xinjiang region. Unidentified persons threw explosives out of the windows, and one car exploded.
Local media reported that at least 31 people were killed and more than 90 injured in the attack.
Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed his condolences to Chinese President Xi Jinping following the bombings, adding that Moscow remains interested in cooperating with Beijing in the fight against terrorism and extremism.
