China executes two for pre-Olympics attack in Xinjiang

China executed two people in restive far-west Xinjiang today after a court convicted them over a deadly attack on police in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics last August, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

The brief report did not give details of the executed, but they may have been two men sentenced to death in December. Xinhua said they were found guilty over a "terrorist attack on a frontier city's border police that left 17 dead" and which came despite tightened security ahead of the Summer Games.

Almost half of Xinjiang's 20 million people are Uighur, a largely Muslim group with a culture and language close to other Turkic parts of central Asia. Many Uighurs resent controls imposed by Beijing and an inflow of Han Chinese migrants.

The attackers rammed a truck into police on a morning training run on Aug. 4 in the oasis city of Kashgar, following up their attack with explosives, a homemade gun and knives, state-run media reported at the time.

China had warned of unrest by groups seeking to exploit the world's attention on China in the run-up to the hugely successful Beijing Olympics which in the end passed off without incident.

In December, two Kashgar residents, Abdurahman Azat and Kurbanjan Hemit, were convicted of homicide and illegally producing guns, ammunition and explosives by a court which sentenced them to death, Xinhua reported at the time.

Chinese officials have said Uighur militants seeking an independent "East Turkestan" are among the biggest threats to the country's stability, a key issue ahead of the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic on Oct 1.

The Xinjiang regional governor, Nuer Baikeli, told reporters in Beijing last month that violence in Afghanistan and recent militant attacks in India and Pakistan showed his region had reason to fear militants.

But human rights groups and Uighur independence activists say Beijing grossly exaggerates the threat to justify harsh controls.

On Wednesday, China announced that two people were sentenced to death over riots in Tibet's regional capital Lhasa last year.

China's crackdowm on the violence sparked protests which interrupted parts of the international leg of the Olympic torch relay.