Blasts and clash kill 8 in China

Suspected Muslim separatists and suicide bombers have launched a dozen attacks in west China, killing eight people two days into the Olympics.

It was the second attack in Xinjiang in a week after 16 police were killed at a border post on Monday.

The home-made grenade attacks shook Kuqa, a town in the south of Xinjiang more than 3,000km from Beijing, before and around dawn.

Four suicide bombers died in the attacks on government offices which killed one person, and police shot dead three assailants.

The entire county had now been cordoned off, business had been suspended and roadside operations shut.

The Xinhua news agency said: "The lawbreakers drove a taxi to the local public security office, industry and business administration and other sites and tossed home-made explosives, destroying two police vehicles."

One suspect told police 15 people were involved in the attacks, Xinhua said without accounting for the others.

Local officials contacted refused to clarify how many died or how.

An official in the Kuqa Communist Party Committee office said: "Our leaders haven't determined the nature of the incident yet. It looks like separatist forces."

China says militants seeking an independent East Turkestan homeland for Muslim Uighurs in the Xinjiang region are among the top threats to the Beijing Olympics.

© Independent Television News Limited 2008. All rights reserved.

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