Two women, including a teenage girl, were among the suicide attackers who launched a series of bomb attacks on a police station, government offices and shops, according to a senior official in China’s troubled north-western region of Xinjiang.

Chinese police in black body armour and carrying machine guns and rifles hunted for three escaped suspects yesterday, after the attacks on Sunday morning, the latest in a series of violent incidents apparently carried out by separatist insurgents and timed to coincide with the Beijing Olympics.

A 15-year old girl identified as Hailiqiemu Abulizi was said to be in a stable condition last night, after being injured when a home made bomb exploded prematurely. She underwent surgery after suffering 17 separate injuries, including a broken leg and foot.

Another woman, who has not been identified by the authorities, died after setting off a bomb which she was carrying in order to avoid imminent capture as she and four of her fellow attackers were cornered in a bazaar in the oasis town of Kuqa in China’s Xinjiang region. According to the Chinese authorities, ten of the attackers died in the attack, all of them Uighurs, a Muslim people who form the biggest ethnic group in Xinjiang.

A Uighur passer-by who was caught up in the attacks died in hospital yesterday, the second man to be killed by the bombings which injured five others. Three of the attackers were arrested, and ten died, including two who killed themselves with their own bombs.

“If they are [Uighur] nationalists, then why didn’t they attack Chinese people?” asked Mu Tielifuhasimu, head of Aksu prefecture of which Kuqa is part. “They actually killed two Uighur people, and injured other innocent people in the streets.”

In fact the seventeen separate attacks seem to have planned with the intention of avoiding harm to Uighurs or civilians. They began at about 2.30 in the morning, a time when few people were on the streets, and were directed at the police headquarters, a government building and shops and businesses owned by ethnic Han Chinese, whom some Uighurs resent as colonialist interlopers.

Witnesses, most of whom refused to give their names, described chaotic early morning scenes as armed police hunted down the fleeing attackers through the back alleys of Kuqa. The bloody end came at around 8.30am with a last desperate stand among the empty stalls and shops of the night bazaar. A two minute film shot by one man on his camera phone from a high building overlooking the scene, and obtained by The Times, shows police cars driving down the street, and figures running for cover, while a voice, presumably that of a policeman, barks through a megaphone.

“I live nearby and I could hear explosions and shooting,” a Chinese man named Ma said. “Judging from the noise, there were a lot of explosions. I peeped out and saw police everywhere, coming from every direction to arrest them.” Most traces of the attacks had been cleared up by yesterday, although there were still fragments of broken glass in front of a row of damaged shops and windows close to the market were pierced by bullet holes.

Mr Mu said that the attackers were all Uighurs, but said that it was too early to draw conclusions about their motives or whether they were members of an organisation. He also declined to speculate on a link with an attack eight days ago in which 16 police were killed in the Xinjiang city of Kashgar by two men who drove a lorry into them, stabbed and bombed them.

But there are no plausible candidates other than the shadowy groups who, over the years, have called for independence for the region which they refer to as East Turkestan. “I think we are seeing an upturn in Uighur militancy,” said Nicholas Bequelin, a researcher based in Hong Kong for Human Rights Watch, and an expert on Xinjiang.

“This [series of attacks on Monday] is unprecedented in terms of its organisation. It is an incredible act of defiance during the Olympics, a moment most precious to the government when they most want to avoid any kind of trouble or separatist violence.” He said that the use of female suicide attackers appeared to be a first.

Journalist working in Kuqa were closely monitored by police and officials and The Times photographer, Jack Hill, was detained for hours yesterday after Kuqa police insisted that the identity documents issued by Beijing police were inadequate. He was eventually released after intervention from Mr Mu, but forbidden from taking photographs in the town.

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