China said that it had foiled attacks by five terrorist groups in the past six months and had arrested 82 people plotting to sabotage the event as it sought to justify a sweeping security operation).

The report was issued a day after a rare admission that police had shot dead five suspected members of a Muslim gang planning a holy war in the region of Xinjiang.

The Communist authorities are determined to show the world that they have full control over security threats. Li Changchun, the Chinese propaganda chief, told The Times that Beijing could guarantee the security of the Games.

He gave no details of the operation, which has involved the deployment of missiles just a few hundred yards from the Bird's Nest National Stadium in Beijing.

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The Government said that it foiled several terrorist plots this year from Xinjiang, a mainly Muslim region where militant Uighurs have been accused of working with al-Qaeda to bring about an independent state called East Turkestan.

Chen Zhuangwei, the police chief of the regional capital, Urumqi, said that 82 people had been arrested since January.

“Police in the regional capital also detained 66 gang members of the three evil forces of terrorism, separatism and extremism, and destroyed 41 training bases of holy war from January to June,” he said.

Officials said that security forces had stopped a plot to crash an airliner, as well as plans to carry out bombings and to kidnap athletes and journalists during the Games.

Little hard evidence was offered to back up the reports although terror experts said that Beijing faced a significant threat from the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, a radical group linked to al-Qaeda. State-run media said that at least seven suspects were killed in police raids this year.

Uighur advocacy groups denied that separatists were plotting attacks in Xinjiang and accused China of embarking on a pre-Olympic security crackdown. Dilxat Raxit, a spokesman for the exiled World Uyghur Congress, said: “What China claims simply is not true. Wanting to boycott the Games is not the same as wanting to damage them.”