The militant groups that launched three bloody attacks in Hotan and Kashgar in late July were homegrown and had no foreign terror links, Xinjiang authorities said yesterday as they released new details about the assailants.
Most members of the two groups, whose attacks left 32 dead and dozens more wounded, were all from Xinjiang's restive Uygur communities and procured their weapons locally, said the director of the government's news office in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.
'No clues have suggested that the groups were masterminded by overseas militant organisations,' the official, Hou Hanmin, quoted a senior local police officer as saying.
The government's findings contradict claims in late August by the foreign-based Xinjiang-independence group, Turkestan Islamic Party, which sought to take credit for the deadly attacks.
Hou noted the group had made similar baseless claims before.
'Almost all key members of both of the groups were Uygurs from different places in Xinjiang, while the weapons they used were bought locally,' Hou said.