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China's Xinjiang hit by violence Violence in west China kills 129
(about 8 hours later)
Three people have been killed and more than 20 injured in violence in the city of Urumqi in China's restive Xinjiang region, state media says. Violence in China's restive western region of Xinjiang has left 129 people dead, state media say - a sharp increase on an earlier reported toll.
Reports previously said only three people had died and more than 20 had been injured in the city of Urumqi.
Xinhua news agency said police restored order after demonstrators attacked passers-by and set fire to vehicles.Xinhua news agency said police restored order after demonstrators attacked passers-by and set fire to vehicles.
Xinhua did not say how many people were involved or what their motive was. The government has blamed separatist Uighurs based abroad and exiles led by a US-based businesswoman.
But activists and eyewitnesses said that those involved in the unrest were minority Muslim Uighurs. An overnight curfew has been declared. They were accused of orchestrating attacks on majority ethnic Han Chinese.
Xinjiang is home to about eight million Uighurs, some of whom want independence. Uighur exiles said police had fired indiscriminately on a peaceful protest.
"It started as a few hundred, and then there were easily over 1,000 involved," one unidentified eyewitness told Reuters news agency. An overnight curfew was imposed, as activists reported multiple arrests.
Ethnic tensions 'Foreign plot'
Adam Grode, an American national studying in Urumqi, said he has seen protesters knocking over police barriers and smashing bus windows. Eyewitnesses said the violence started on Sunday with a few hundred people, and grew to more than 1,000.
Police responded with tear gas, hoses and batons, he told the Associated Press news agency, and once night fell more police and soldiers poured into the city. Xinhua says the protesters carried knives, bricks and batons, smashed cars and stores, and fought with security forces.
Uighur activists in Japan and Germany said that they had received reports of multiple arrests. Uighur groups insisted a peaceful protest had become victim to state violence.
Xinhua said that the three dead were Han Chinese. The Xinjiang government has blamed the latest unrest on Rebiya Kadeer, the Uighurs' leader who is living in exile in the United States.
It is not clear what triggered the unrest, but relations between the Han Chinese community and the Uighurs can be tense. "An initial investigation showed the violence was masterminded by the separatist World Uighur Congress led by Rebiya Kadeer," the government said in a statement, according to Xinhua.
China enforces tight controls in Xinjiang and rejects calls from the Uighurs for self-rule. It said the violence had been "instigated and directed from abroad".
The US state department accuses Beijing of human-rights abuses in the region. The BBC's Quentin Sommerville in China says Xinjiang, a mainly Muslim area, has been a source of tension for many years.
In a report released earlier this year, it said that "severe cultural and religious repression" of ethnic minorities in Xinjiang had increased. Some of its Uighur population of about eight million, want to break away from China, and its majority Han Chinese population.
Uighur separatists, meanwhile, have waged a low-level campaign against Chinese rule for decades and there are sporadic outbreaks of violence. The authorities say police are securing order across the region and anyone disrupting order will be detained and punished.