Grenade attack kills 16 in China ahead of Games

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BEIJING (Reuters) - A police station in China's restive Xinjiang region was attacked on Monday morning, four days before the Beijing Olympics begin, killing 16 officers and wounding 12, state media reported.

"Rioters drove two vehicles to break into the border patrolarmed police division" near Kashgar and threw two grenades,Xinhua reported.

The brief report did not describe the attackers. But theXinjiang region in the far northwest has been at the heart ofChina's security fears leading up the Olympics, which begin infour days.

Xinjiang is home to a large Uighur Muslim population, manyof them discontent under strict Chinese rule. Some Uighurgroups are campaigning for an independent homeland for theirTurkic-speaking people.

Kashgar in Xinjiang's south is dominated by Uighurs, manyof them pious Muslims.

China says it has foiled terror plots targeting thismonth's Beijing Olympics and in the first six months of theyear police detained 82 people in Xinjiang for plotting tosabotage the Games, according to state media.

Beijing has given mixed signals on the terror threat fromXinjiang.

It has accused militant Uighurs of working with al Qaeda tobring about an independent state called East Turkestan, but itdenied claims by a group calling itself the Turkistan IslamicParty that it was responsible for a series of bus bombingsaround the country.

Senior Colonel Tian Yixiang, China's top military officerin charge of Olympics security, said on Friday "East Turkestanterrorist groups" were the greatest threat to Games security,with lesser threats coming from Tibetan separatists and theexiled spiritual group, the Falun Gong.

(Reporting by Chris Buckley; Editing by Nick Macfie)