Audra Ang, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

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BEIJING - The first outbreak of violence in China's western region of Xinjiang since a pair of high-profile attacks during the Olympics has left two Chinese policemen dead and seven more wounded, authorities and an activist said Thursday.

The conflict in the predominantly Muslim region ignited Wednesday in a village in Jiashi County, but it was not immediately clear what caused it or if any Uighurs were injured.

Activist Dilxat Raxit, spokesman for the Germany-based World Uighur Congress, said witnesses heard "fierce gunfire" but did not give any details.

A woman at the emergency centre of the No. 1 People's Hospital in Kashgar, about 100 kilometers west of Jiashi, said seven police officers were being treated at the facility, including one for stab wounds. She refused to give her name as is common among Chinese officials.

Mu'erbiya, an official from Jiashi County's Communist Party propaganda office, said two police officers had died and an investigation was under way. Mu'erbiya, like some Uighurs, uses only one name.

A public security official said eight Uighurs - seven men and one woman - were involved. One man had been captured, but the others were still at large, said the official, who refused to give his name.

The region saw three deadly attacks during and just before the Beijing Olympics. Videos also appeared online threatening the games.

Four days before the Aug. 8 start of the competition, two attackers in Kashgar rammed a truck into a group of police who they then attacked with homemade bombs and knives, killing 16.

On Aug. 10, bombers hit 17 sites - including a police station, government building, bank and shops - in the ancient Silk Road city of Kuqa. Police said 10 assailants, including one woman, were killed along with a security guard and a bystander. State media said another of the attackers, a 15-year-old girl, was injured.

Two days later, knife-wielding assailants jumped from a vehicle and attacked a road checkpoint in Yamanya town, stabbing four guards, three of whom died.

No one has claimed responsibility for any of the incidents, though government officials have suggested terrorism is behind the violence.

China has long said that militants among the region's dominant ethnic Uighurs are leading an Islamic separatist movement in Xinjiang, an oil-and gas-rich region on the border with Afghanistan, Pakistan and six Central Asian nations. The Uighurs are Turkic-speaking Muslims with a language and culture distinct from the majority of Chinese.

But critics accuse Beijing of using claims of terrorism as an excuse to crack down on peaceful pro-independence sentiment and expressions of Uighur identity.

The Uighurs suffered greatly in the 1960s and 1970s when the government - caught up in Marxist revolutionary fervor - viewed religion as well as minority languages and culture as divisive remnants of feudalism that should be abolished.

In the 1980s, the government adopted a more liberal political and cultural policy in Xinjiang but, in the following decade, resorted to a hardline policy after scattered incidents of unrest.

The tough measures continue today, and may fuel support for the Turkestan Islamic Party, a group experts say may have links to al-Qaida in Pakistan, though it is small and has limited capacity to launch attacks beyond its region. The group released the two videos threatening to attack the Olympics.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang on Thursday confirmed reports of the Jiashi incident but did not provide any details. He insisted that there were only sporadic tensions in Xinjiang.

"People of various ethnic groups coexist in harmony and equality, and the situation in Xinjiang is generally good," Qin said at a regular briefing. "This has nothing to do with any alleged persecution or oppression of the Uighur people."

He said that there was a handful of Uighur "terrorist forces attempting to create violence and split China" but that the government and authorities were cracking down on them.

Raxit, the activist, said large-scale arrests were taking place as a result of Wednesday's incident.

"It is part of China's worsening crackdown in the area," he said in a statement. "The international community should prevent the Chinese government from carrying out their systematic crackdown policies on the Uighurs."