If you didn’t know what had happened there, you might pass by the site of the Kashgar massacre and hardly give it a second glance. The police and soldiers were on the scene in minutes and the job of cleaning up began almost as soon as the dead and injured had been carried away.

The scarred front of the shabby Yijin Hotel was sheeted over and only the broken windows in the upper floors suggested the power of the explosions.

“There was blood here and here,” said one man, pointing at the pavement, one of dozens of gawpers milling round in the evening. “But they came and washed it all away.”

There must have been a lot of blood. For it was here, early yesterday morning that China suffered its worst act of political violence in at least a decade when two Muslim attackers killed 16 policemen and injured 16 more in a bold, frenzied and bloody attack with truck, bomb and knife.

Expert View

Repeated warnings from the Chinese authorities of a serious terrorist threat from the Uighurs were dismissed as cries of wolf to justify a security crackdown during the Olympics

Jane Macartney

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Their choice of target – Chinese security forces in one of the country’s most tense and restive regions – is ominous for a country struggling with threats to its national unity.

Its timing – four days before the opening of the Beijing Olympics – could not be more embarrassing. No wonder, then, that the first instinct of the authorities was to hose away the traces and act as if nothing had occurred.

Until the attack Xinjiang’s cities had been peaceful, but conversations with Uighurs on the ground reveal an atmosphere of tension and anxiety.

Even among those who are happy to regard themselves as Chinese citizens, there is resentment at the strictures imposed upon Islamic practice in Xinjiang and the tendency to identify strictly observant Muslims as “terrorists”.

Children under 18 are not allowed to go to mosques or to receive Islamic instruction. Imams, or religious leaders, must be appointed by the state and there are strict controls on the building and repair of mosques.

Posters have been put up by the authorities warning of the pernicious influence of Hizb ut-Tahrir (Party of Liberation), a London-based organisation which has never openly advocated violence, but which seeks the establishment of an Islamic caliphate.

Unknown numbers of Uighurs have been detained without trial or charge for alleged association with the organisation.

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