China yesterday revealed the ethnicity of those killed in rioting in the western city of Urumqi last week, and increased the official number of dead to 183.

State media said that 137 Han Chinese and 46 minority Uighurs were killed when an Uighur mob took to the streets on Sunday, burning cars and buses, smashing shops and provoking tit-for-tat reprisals in what the Government says was the worst ethnic violence in decades.

President Hu Jintao was forced to return from the G8 meeting in Italy, where Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish Prime Minister, described the crisis as “a kind of genocide”.

Security forces have restored a semblance of calm to Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang province, but tensions remained high yesterday as the authorities locked mosques and tried to cancel Friday prayers to stop violence flaring up again.

At the front gate of the White Mosque, not far from where the riots erupted, a group of around 100 Muslim men gathered in white skullcaps to prepare for the most important prayers of the week. They demanded to enter until the gates were finally opened. The policeman at the gate told The Times: “We decided to let them in because they were too many. There could have been trouble.”

Word spread and hundreds more converged on the site. The mosque authorities had no choice but to allow an abbreviated service. “They had to let us in,” one man said. “It is Friday. That is what our faith demands. But we are peaceful people, we are good people.”

Many Uighurs complained that relatives who had nothing to do with the violence on Sunday had been arrested in police sweeps of the city that have so far taken in more than 2,000 suspects. Others said that those who took to the streets were only taking revenge for mistreatment of Uighurs in other parts of China.

The spark that set off the tinderbox that is the relationship between Han Chinese and ethnic Uighur Muslims came from 2,000 miles away. Rumours of the rape of two Han Chinese employees by Uighur workers at Xuri Toy Factory in Guangdong province led to retribution attacks in which two Uighur men were killed and dozens were injured.

Word of the Han assault reached Uighurs in their Xinjiang homeland, and rumours spread that hundreds of their kind had died and Uighur children had been chopped up.

Anything seemed credible. Resentment between Han and Uighurs has bubbled in the Xinjiang region of western China for decades. One shopkeeper said: “They mistreated our women over there. We have to protect ourselves.”

Urumqi has long appeared to be among the most peaceful cities in the region, with its booming economy raising the living standards of both Han and Uighur residents.

Uighurs here show little interest in extremist calls for independence and increasing numbers work for the Government and state-owned companies. Many, however, are unhappy at the influx of Han Chinese chasing job opportunities offered by the development of regional oil and gas fields.

One Han Chinese said: “My Uighur friends joke with me saying, ‘You Han have come from so far away, so very far away, and now you are taking our natural resources’.”

Nicholas Bequelin, of Human Rights Watch, said that the riots appeared to pit the poorest of the Uighur poor against similarly poor Han incomers from other provinces who are directly competing to eke out a living. Relations between the better-off were less strained.

In a hillside slum on the edge of Urumqi where raw sewage runs down alleys between mud-brick shacks, a group of Uighurs said that none of them could find jobs, apart from occasional day labour. Maimat Ali said: “We are very sad about the innocent Han, but we are frightened too. We dare not go down into the town. And here we have no work.”

Some Uighurs are also furious at the razing of swaths of their ancient neighbourhoods in the Silk Road city of Kashgar. Nervous that tension could spread there, foreign journalists were ordered to leave yesterday “for their own safety”.

Others resent the limits placed on religious practices. Anyone wanting to go on the haj, or pilgrimage to Mecca, must join a group; imams are discouraged from attending weddings; anyone under 18 is not allowed to attend mosque.

Mr Becquelin said: “The tragedy is that most people who died were killed as a result of accumulated resentment of state policies. The rift between the two groups is huge, but the Government has the tools to heal this.”

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