Even though China has been ramping up security across its restive Xinjiang region for months, the local Communist Party boss has said the authorities face a life or death struggle to quell terrorism in the mainly Muslim area.

After a decade of relative stability and few reports of violence among the restive ethnic Uighur Muslim minority, China’s western-most region has been rocked by three bloody attacks in less than two weeks. Analysts say the assailants almost certainly timed their actions to coincide with the Olympic Games that opened in Beijing on August 8.

Xinjiang party secretary Wang Lequan made a speech in which “he pointed out that leaders at all levels must deeply understand that the struggle against the three forces is one of life or death”.

The address, published in the Xinjiang Daily, referred to terrorism, separatism and religious extremism as the three greatest challenges to security and unity in a volatile region that split away and been reunified with China several times in the 19th and 20 centuries.

Mr Wang said: “In Xinjiang, the fight against separatist forces is long-term, arduous and complex.”

Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking people, have long chafed under Chinese rule but they have rarely resorted to violence or any form of organized resistance to Beijing. China has accused the extremists of seeking a separate state of East Turkestan.

The party secretary said security forces must “stick to a strategy of seizing the initiative to strike pre-emptively, closely guard against and attack separatist sabotage by the three forces and never allow our enemies to gain strength”.

An attack on August 4 in the Silk Road bazaar town of Kashgar that killed 16 police had been “planned, organized and premeditated terrorist violence”. Mr Wang said: “After the incident, relavant authorities handled it according to the law, preserved social order and the normal order of work and life.”

Two men, both Uighurs, who ploughed a truck into the police on an early morning jog and then attacked them with grenades and knives, were arrested on the spot.

Despite an increase in security in a region already carefully monitored by special forces, the attacks have continued in the oil-rich area.

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