Some of the five Chinese who died committed suicide, while the others were shot dead by Vietnamese police officers and border guards, according to an English-language report on the website of Thanh Nien Daily, which is published by the Vietnam National Youth Federation, an official organization. The report also said that three women in the group “armed themselves with knives.” Another report said that some or all of those who killed themselves did so by leaping from the multistory building.

The Chinese group consisted of 10 men, four women and two children. They were detained at the Bac Phong Sinh border crossing in Vietnam’s northern Quang Ninh Province, which borders Guangxi Province in China. Chinese border guards had informed the Vietnamese at 5:30 a.m. Friday that a group from China was trying to enter Vietnam illegally, the Thanh Nien Daily report said.

The newspaper’s website posted a photograph of Vietnamese guards standing beside the four women and two children. The women all wore scarves over their faces, a typical style of dress for some Muslim women in China, particularly in parts of the Xinjiang region, where ethnic Uighurs, who generally practice Sunni Islam, are a significant population. In the photograph, the faces of the two children are visible, and their features indicate they could be Uighurs.

In Xinjiang, Uighurs live mostly along a belt of oasis towns south of the immense Taklamakan Desert and in some western border areas. They complain of harassment and discrimination by the Han, the dominant ethnic group in China, and violent clashes between the two groups have increased, leading to fierce crackdowns on Uighurs by the Han-dominated security forces.

China says there are terrorist groups among the Uighurs in Xinjiang. Some Uighurs say extremism could take hold if Chinese officials continue with their harsh policies against the Uighurs.