Author: Press Trust of India
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: March 10, 2008
URL: http://www.indianexpress.com/story/282255.html
China on Sunday said it thwarted a planned
terror attack on a passenger aircraft that took off from the restive northwestern
Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, and also foiled a plot by militants to strike
during the Beijing Olympics. A China Southern Airlines plane was forced to
land at Lanzhou in neighbouring Gansu province two hours after it took off
from Xinjiang's capital Urumqi on Friday because "some people were attempting
to create an air disaster," an official said.
The "attackers were stopped in time by
the police and the passengers and crew members on board were safe," Nur
Bekri, Chairman of the Xinjiang Regional Government, said. "But we can
be sure that this was a case intending to create an air crash," official
Xinhua news agency quoted him as saying on the sidelines of the ongoing session
of China's parliament, National People's Congress. The plane reached its destination,
Beijing, he said, without elaborating.
An airline official however said he could
not confirm whether the incident was a terror attack, as "its up to the
police department to verify". Another official said two terrorists killed
in January this year in the same region had plotted an attack targeting the
Olympics, slated to be held in Beijing in August. Police had shot dead two
terrorists and arrested 15 others, saying they had smashed a terrorist gang
in Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang.