No mercy for terrorists: Xinjiang Party chief

The government will not tolerate terrorists as their violent activities are inhumane and target civilians, Party chief of northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region said Wednesday.

The situation in Xinjiang was stable, though the region was last month hit by another violent attack, said Zhang Chunxian, secretary of Xinjiang Regional Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC).

On the evening of Feb. 28, rioters killed at least 10 people and injured a number of others in Yecheng county of Xinjiang's Kashgar prefecture.

Witnesses said people armed with cleavers attacked innocent pedestrians on the street of Yecheng. Police shot dead two of the attackers.

Zhang said the Yecheng incident as well as other terrorist attacks that rocked Xinjiang last year were related to the "three evil forces" of separatism, extremism and terrorism.

"This is not a religious problem, nor is it an ethnic problem. Their deeds are against the human race. They wave knives at the old people, women and children with extremely brutal means," Zhang, a deputy to the National People's Congress (NPC)， said at the ongoing parliament's annual session.

"We shall show no mercy to these terrorists and fight them unswervingly. We shall not let them wave knives against our women, children and our innocent people," Zhang said.

Located in China's far west, Xinjiang is home to about 9 million Uygurs, a largely Muslim ethnic group. Security experts say growing religious extremism in the region has fanned most of the violent attacks.

During Xinjiang's most deadly unrest in decades, 197 people were killed and about 1,700 others injured after riots broke out in the capital city of Urumqi on July 5, 2009.