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POLICE shot dead 59 terrorists and arrested 215 suspects involved in a terror attack that left 37 civilians dead and another 13 injured last Monday in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, authorities said yesterday as they released more details of one of the worst incidents of violence in years.

The figures were revealed by the regional government after a meeting on Saturday chaired by Zhang Chunxian, chief of the Party’s Xinjiang regional committee.

Among the dead were 35 Hans and two Uygurs, the government said. Of 31 vehicles smashed in the violent attack, six were burned out.

Police confiscated long knives and axes as well as the terrorists’ banners that hailed “holy war.”

A gang armed with knives and axes attacked a police station and government offices in Elixku Township early last Monday morning, and some moved on to nearby Huangdi Township, attacking civilians and smashing vehicles as they passed, the government said. Gang members also set roadblocks on the Bachu-Shache highway and stopped vehicles before slashing passengers indiscriminately and forcing civilians to join them in the terror attack, according to police.

Investigations showed that it was an attack jointly “organized and premeditated” by terrorists in and outside China, the government said.

The mastermind behind the attack was identified as Nuramat Sawut from Elixku Township, who had close connections with East Turkestan Islamic Movement, a terrorist organization.

Sawut is said to have been spreading separatism and religious extremism with audio and video materials since 2013 and through this process had developed a terrorist group and became its leader.

Since the beginning of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, the group held multiple gatherings in remote places, during which they made attack plans and prepared weapons.

Zhang said there would be no letup in the fight against militants.

“Fighting violent terror needs thorough resolution and cannot lack firmness and we must pursue the tottering enemy with force,” Zhang said in a statement.

Authorities had reported the incident on Tuesday, saying only that “dozens of” people had been killed when knife-wielding attackers staged attacks in two towns in the region.

On Friday, police shot dead nine suspected terrorists and captured another in Hotan Prefecture in Xinjiang, two days after extremists had murdered Jume Tahir, the imam of China’s largest mosque.

The head of the Id Kah mosque in Kashgar was killed after leading morning prayers.

Tahir was murdered by “three thugs influenced by religious extremist ideology,” the Xinjiang government web portal (www.tianshan.cn) reported.

He was killed the day after China’s Muslims celebrated the Eid festival marking the end of Ramadan.

Shache witnessed another terror attack on December 30, 2013, when nine knife-wielding terrorists attacked a police station.

They threw explosives and set police cars on fire. Police shot dead eight terrorists.

On May 22, an attack on a market in Urumqi, the regional capital, left 31 dead and 94 injured.