China: Terrorists Targeted Olympics

My Way News - China: Terrorists Targeted Olympics

Police found guns, homemade bombs, training materials and "extremist religious ideological materials" during the Jan. 27 raid in Urumqi, in which two members of the gang were killed and 15 arrested, according to earlier reports.

Chinese forces have for years been battling a low-intensity separatist movement among Xinjiang's Uighurs, a Turkic Muslim people culturally and ethnically distinct from China's Han majority. Iron-fisted Chinese rule has largely suppressed the violence, however, and no major bombing or shooting incidents have been reported in almost a decade.

Wang said the group had been trained by and was following the orders of a Uighur separatist group based in Pakistan and Afghanistan called the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, or ETIM. The group has been labeled a terrorist organization by both the United Nations and the United States. East Turkestan is another name for Xinjiang.

China says its main terror threat comes from ETIM. Although the group is not believed to have more than a few dozen members, terrorism experts say