KUQA, China (AP):

Soldiers with machine guns guarded the sidewalks and police yelled at residents who tried to leave their homes in China's restive Muslim territory yesterday, hours after officers battled bomb-tossing assailants in the second daring attack in a week in the region far from the Beijing Olympics.

The attackers were able to launch a series of pre-dawn bombings in this west-central part of the rugged Xinjiang region despite tightened security for the games. The violence - which police say killed 10 assailants and one security guard - also came just days after a militant Islamic group linked to al-Qaeda issued a new warning it would strike during the Olympics.

Simmering tension

No group has claimed responsi-bility for yesterday's attack in Kuqa county, and police have not released any evidence that a terrorist organisation was involved. But tensions in Xinjiang have been simmering for decades between the Muslim minority Uighur people and the Han Chinese who make up about 90 per cent of the nation's population.

Many Uighurs yearn for independence for Xinjiang, a sprawling region rich in minerals and oil. Critics say the millions of Han Chinese who have settled here in recent years are gradually squeezing the Turkic people out of their homeland. But many Chinese believe the Uighurs are backward and ungrateful for the economic development the Chinese have brought to the poor region, which borders eight Central Asian nations.