China tense after police kill 2

URUMQI, China — Security tightened Tuesday in the capital of China's western Xinjiang region, where paramilitary police blocked access to a Uighur neighborhood where two Uighurs were fatally shot a day earlier, the latest violent clash in the wake of last week's ethnic riots.

Security forces with shields and rifles lay a band of spikes across a road leading to the alley of dingy apartment blocks near where police shot and killed the two Uighur men and wounded a third on Monday.

The shootings reflect how uneasy the city of Urumqi remains after a spasm of ethnic unrest last week left at least 184 dead, most of them Han Chinese, and 1,680 injured in the worst ethnic violence China has seen in decades.

On Monday, after several days of relative calm, the city government said three Uighur men, who were attacking a fourth Uighur with long knives and batons, turned on officers who tried to break up the fight. The police shot and killed two men when they ignored warnings, the government said. The third man was wounded and taken to a nearby hospital, where his condition was not known.

It was the first time the government has acknowledged its security forces opened fire since violence hit Urumqi on July 5.

By midday, the blockade of the alley was lifted, although armed paramilitary troops were stationed in several big clusters along the road. They continued to prevent cars from entering the main Uighur district near the Grand Bazaar market.

A police van blared messages in the Uighur language, attacking Rebiya Kadeer, a prominent exiled Uighur activist whom the Chinese government blames for inciting the unrest.

The government has not provided evidence to back its claim and Kadeer, who lives in Washington, D.C. has denied the charges. She blames government policies for exacerbating long-standing tensions between the dominant Han Chinese and the minority Muslim Uighur community.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang appealed Tuesday to Muslim nations for understanding of China's handling of the unrest and rejected assertions it would hurt Beijing's ties with Muslim countries.

"If they have a clear idea about the true nature of the incident, they would understand China's policies concerning religion and religious issues and understand the measures we have taken," he told a regular news conference.

Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, had earlier compared the situation in Xinjiang to "a kind of genocide."