A Kuga county resident posted a message at Tainya.com, saying that at 3:16 am, many local residents were awakened by explosions. Another major blast could be heard at the moment the resident posted the message.
Another local resident posted a message to Baidu.com, a popular Chinese BBS, saying that the explosions started at 2:30 am. The two postings, however, have been removed from the web sites. The Google cache file for the posting recorded by Boxun.com, an internet news outlet outside mainland China, also became unavailable for unknown reasons.
Witnesses also reported that sporadic gun fire could be heard.
Kuqa is the most populous county of the Aksu prefecture, with a population of 400,000. It is about 740 kilometers from Urumqi, the regional capital and is one of the four famous tourist counties in Xinjiang.
Local newspapers such as Xinjiang Daily and Xinjiang Fazhi did not report the incident.
Xinjiang Province is home to the Uighur minority, who are mainly Muslims and are accused by the Chinese regime of harboring terrorists.
On August 4 the Chinese State-run media reported that sixteen policemen were killed and 16 others were injured after a border patrol armed police division in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region was raided by two assailants who were said to use a dump truck, bombs, knives. Two Japanese reporters who happened to be on the scene of this incident were beaten and then detained for several days.
The original Chinese article: http://news.epochtimes.com/gb/8/8/10/n2223029.htm
