China’s Xinjiang region in lock-down after bomb blast

At least 31 people have been killed and more than 90 injured after two vehicles ploughed into a market and explosives were thrown in China’s restive Xinjiang region, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

Two off-road vehicles drove into a crowd in the regional capital Urumqi on Thursday, with one of them exploding, Xinhua said, in what state-run media called the latest “serious terrorist incident” to hit Xinjiang, home to mostly Muslim Uighurs.

The owner of a small business told Xinhua he had heard a dozen big bangs, the AFP news agency reported.

Pictures posted on Weibo, a Chinese equivalent of Twitter, purported to show victims lying in a tree-lined street.

Flames rose in the background, while other images showed smoke billowing over market stalls behind a police roadblock.

China has blamed a series of knife and bomb attacks in recent months on separatists from Xinjiang. 

The region has been plagued by violence for years, but rights activists and exile groups say the government’s own heavy-handed policies in the area have sowed the seeds of unrest.