BEIJING: China said on Sunday 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.
"The authorities are investigating who the attackers are, where they are from and what's their background," he said.
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.
"Obviously, the gang had planned an attack targeting the Olympics," Wang Lequan, chief of the Xinjiang Autonomous Regional Committee of the Communist Party of China said.
The group was said to have collaborated with the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), which has been labeled a terrorist organisation by the United Nations, Xinhua said.
Wang said the Olympics was a big event and "there are always a few people who conspire sabotages. It is no longer a secret now".
"Those terrorists, saboteurs and secessionists are to be battered resolutely, no matter what ethnic group they are from."
Chinese authorities would adopt a strike-first policy against the "three evil forces" of terrorists, separatists and extremists in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Wang said.
"We are prepared to strike them when the evil forces are planning their activities," he said.
Islamic extremists in Xinjiang are attempting to separate the oil-rich region from China and create "East Turkistan".
