RIOTS in China's ethnically divided Xinjiang region have left 27 people dead, according to state media which said police opened fire on 'knife-wielding mobs'.
The violence is the latest to hit the troubled western region, which is about twice the size of Turkey and home to around 10 million members of the mostly Muslim Uighur ethnic minority.
Police shot at 'mobs' who had attacked police stations, a local government building and a construction site, the Xinhua news agency said on Wednesday, citing local officials.
"Seventeen people had been killed... before police opened fire and shot dead 10 rioters," it said. The mobs were also "stabbing at people and setting fire to police cars."
Nine police or security guards and eight civilians were killed before police opened fire, the report said, adding that three other people were taken to hospital with injuries.
The clashes occurred early Wednesday in the Lukqun township of Shanshan County, about 100 kilometres from the desert city of Turpan and about 250 kilometres from the regional capital Urumqi.
The reason for the violence was not immediately clear, and police in Turpan refused to comment when contacted by AFP.
Many of Xinjiang's Uighur community complain of religious and cultural repression by Chinese authorities, and the region is regularly hit by unrest.
China reported that 21 people died in clashes between police and locals in the region in April, which the government said were caused by 'terrorists', and a court in Xinjiang recently jailed nine people 'for religious extremism'.
Uighur rights groups have dismissed the claims of terrorism, citing economic inequality and religious repression as causes of unrest.
The region's worst ethnic violence in recent years occurred in July 2009, when riots involving Uighurs and settlers from China's Han ethnic majority killed around 200 people in Urumqi.
Those clashes led to a major security push in the region, which rights groups have said resulted in intense monitoring of Uighurs by security forces.
A specialised anti-terrorism unit of the People's Liberation Army carried out drills in April, according to a previous report by the PLA Daily.
The region saw more than half of China's trials for the charge of 'endangering state security' last year, but is home to less than two per cent of the country's population, suggesting 'ethnic discrimination', the US-based Dui Hua Foundation advocacy group said.
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