Protesters throw rocks at police on a street in Urumqi, capital of China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region July 5, 2009. More than 140 have been killed and more than 800 injured in distrubances in the most westerly of China's provinces. Now again rioting is starting back.
Map show location of Xinjiang and city Urumqi, has seen one of the worst racial rioting in China. Usually between the HAN chinese and the mostly Muslim Uighurs ethnic group.
Hundreds of police fanned out across Urumqi on Friday
Police facing the riot with heavy guns.
Riots pushing and confronting the police demands for more security against the syringe attacks in the city. Officials are blaming the Muslim Separatists of doing it.
A Chinese official says that five people have been killed and 14 wounded during protests over security in the restive western city of Urumqi.
Deputy Mayor Zhang Hong reported the casualties at a news conference in the city, capital of the western region of Xinjiang. He said they died Thursday.
Thousands of Han Chinese flooded the streets in angry protests for a second day Friday to demand increased security in the city after a string of bizarre attacks of needle stabbings that appear to be ethnically motivated.
Police used tear gas and public appeals to break up crowds marching on government offices and called on authorities to punish those responsible for ethnic rioting in early July that left 197 people dead.
China's police chief accused ethnic Muslim separatists of staging a bizarre series of hypodermic needle stabbings that sent thousands of Chinese into the streets in angry protests for a second day Friday to demand increased security in this western city.
Police used tear gas and public appeals to break up crowds of Chinese marching on government offices and calling on authorities to punish people awaiting trial for communal violence that left 197 people dead in early July in Urumqi. The police response was more forceful than on Thursday, the first day of protests by members of the Han Chinese majority unnerved by the recent spate of syringe stabbings on dozens of people.
But the Xinjiang region, where Urumqi is located, has for decades faced a simmering separatist movement by Uighurs, a largely Muslim ethnic group.
Meng's comments were the first time authorities suggested Uighur militants were involved in the stabbings that had fed rumors and fear in the city for days but that were first publicly reported Wednesday.
Meng's dispatch to Urumqi was a measure of Chinese leaders' anxieties that order was slipping in the often tense city of 2.5 million and that violence between Hans and Uighurs could flare anew.
Heavily Uighur neighborhoods were sealed off by security forces forming barriers at street entrances.
Local police authorities said Friday that hospitals in Urumqi are now treating 531 people who believed they were attacked by hypodermic needle, 55 more than previously reported, Xinhua said. About 106 of them showed obvious signs of needle attacks, it said. Most of the victims were Han Chinese.
So far, none of those stabbed showed any signs of infection or poisonings, state media has said. Infection by AIDS is a concern, given Xinjiang's high rate of HIV cases, spread by needle-sharing among drug users.
None of 160 or so people treated at the Urumqi Medical College Hospital showed symptoms of AIDS or hepatitis, said Lin Fangmu, director of the preventative medicine department.
The unrest shows how unsettled Urumqi remains despite continued high security since the July rioting, the worst communal violence to hit Xinjiang in more than a decade. That rioting began when a protest by Muslim Uighurs spiraled out of control, and Uighurs attacked Han. Days later, Han vigilantes tore through Uighur neighborhoods to retaliate.
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