China has said its security forces exercised restraint in restoring stability but has not provided details nor explained why so many people died.

Uighurs in Urumqi also said they think their death toll is much higher but, with so many security forces and informants about, they were wary of talking about the numbers.

"I've heard that more than 100 Uighurs have died, but nobody wants to talk about it in public," said one Uighur man who did not want to give his name, saying the situation was sensitive.

A Han Chinese man who would only give his surname, Ma, meanwhile, said he thought the government numbers were correct.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey — where daily protests have voiced support for the Uighurs with whom Turks share ethnic and cultural bonds — urged Beijing to prevent attacks on the minority group.

"These incidents in China are as if they are genocide," said Erdogan. "We ask the Chinese government not to remain a spectator to these incidents. There is clearly a savagery here."

China's communist leadership has ordered forces across Xinjiang to mobilize to put down unrest. The state-run China News Service reported that authorities last Monday arrested an unspecified number of people plotting to instigate a riot in Yining, a city near Xinjiang's border with Kazakstan and site of another deadly confrontation between Uighurs and security forces 12 years ago.

The violence last Sunday followed a protest against the June 26 deaths of Uighur factory workers in a brawl in southern China. The crowd then scattered throughout Urumqi, attacking Han Chinese, burning cars and smashing windows.

Many Uighurs who are still free live in fear of being arrested for any act of dissent.

Thousands of Chinese troops have flooded into Urumqi to separate the feuding ethnic groups, and a senior Communist Party official vowed to execute those guilty of murder in the rioting.

A report in the Urumqi Evening News on Friday said police caught 190 suspects in four raids the day before.

The government believes the Uighurs should be grateful for Xinjiang's rapid economic development, which has brought new schools, highways, airports, railways, natural gas fields and oil wells in the sprawling, rugged Central Asian region, three times the size of Texas.

But many of the Turkic-speaking Uighurs, with a population of 9 million in Xinjiang, accuse the dominant Han ethnic group of discriminating against them and saving all the best jobs for themselves. Many also say the Communist Party is repressive and tries to snuff out their Islamic faith, language and culture.