The head of China's largest mosque was murdered after conducting morning prayers, the local government in far western Xinjiang said Thursday, amid intensifying violence in the turbulent region. Jume Tahir, the government-appointed imam of the year-old Id Kah mosque in the city of Kashgar, was killed Wednesday by "three thugs influenced by religious extremist ideology", the Xinjiang government web portal Tianshan said.
Police launched an all-out investigation and shot dead two of the alleged assailants while capturing the other at about noon on Wednesday as they violently resisted with "knives and hatchets," Tianshan said. Tianshan said Tahir's killing was "premeditated" and that the suspects intended to commit a "ruthless murder". It also said they wanted to "increase their influence through 'doing something big'". Tianshan identified the suspects by their names in phonetic Chinese.
Neither Tianshan nor Xinhua initially identified who among them was shot dead and who was apprehended. Tahir was found dead in a pool of blood outside the mosque's prayer house, Radio Free Asia RFA reported earlier on its website. Xinjiang, home to China's mostly Muslim Uighur ethnic minority, has seen escalating violence which in the past year has spilled over into other parts of China.
RFA cited what it described as "witnesses and other officials", including the director of a neighbourhood stability committee in Kashgar, who described the killing as an assassination. Imams and other religious leaders in China are appointed by the government and subject to strict control on the content of their preaching. Tahir, 74, "enjoyed a high reputation among Muslims nationwide", Xinhua said in its dispatch Thursday.
Kashgar, where the mosque is located, is an old oasis city that was part of the Silk Road trade route that ran from Europe to Asia. The killing of Tahir came two days after dozens of people died in violence between Uighurs and security authorities in the Kashgar region. Nearly people were left dead or wounded, the WUC said, while authorities put the toll in the "several tens" in what they called a "terror attack" on a police station and township in Shache county, known as Yarkand in the Uighur language.
