Chinese troops seal off Moslem border town after racial riot

BEIJING, Feb 11 1997 (AFP)

- Troops have sealed off a far northwestern border town in China after riots by separatist Moslems against ethnic Chinese left more than 10 People dead in two days of violence, residents soid Tuesday. The airport of the Moslem border town of Yining, in the far northwest of China's Xinjiang province, was closed and a curfew was imposed after pro-independence rioters went on the rampage. The town is under constant surveillance from both the

paramilitary and armed troops and a seven-hour curfew is in forcen, said a Russian teacher living in the town. "Since the two-days riots that started on Wednesday, everyone has been ordered to remain in their houses between the hours of midnight and seven in the morning," he said by telephone. At the airport, a local offical confirmed that all flights had been stopped since the riots, which erupted on February 5 and spilled over to the next day. "The army is guaranteeing protection for the airport and it will reopen in a few days," she said. Yining is situated in the Yili valley, only 50 kilometres (30 miles) away from Kazakhstan, where the majority of China's exiled Moslem separatists are based. But the Isolated town is a full 700 kilometres (440 miles) northwest of Urumqi, the capital of the autonomous Moslem region of Xinjiang, and 2,8OO kilometres (1,750 miles) from the Chinese capital of Beijing. With the airport ringed, the only access into Yining is by road, and heavily armed soldiers are manning all

checkpoints. "Only people with a special pass con leave or enter the town. These controls were imposed to mantain stability in Yining," said an official reached by telephone at the municipality's propaganda office. He gave the first official confirmation of deaths during the rioting which pitted pro-independence Moslems against ethnic Chinese

by saying "around 10 people were killed and several tens were injured." An-exiled opposition official meanwhile said in the Kazakh capital Almaty on Monday that at least 30 ethnic Moslem Uighurs had been killed by Chinese troops in the rioting.

Citing reports by Ulghurs arriving in Kazakhstan on Monday, a spokesmen for the United Revolutionary National Front (URNF) told

AFP that "at least 30 of our brothers were gunned down by Chinese security forces". The shooting in the west of Xinjiang, an outonomous province in northwest China, took place last week, the URNF spokesman said. The Russian teacher said that in the town centre, where ethnic Chinese are in the majority, four chinese and one muslem Uighur were killed. "I've heard of other deaths in the suburbs, where the Uighurs are in the majority" he said, adding that the local media was talking of "a thousand people" detained following the disturbances.