Frightened Urumqi residents watched Monday as police in bulletproof vests carrying pistols, shotguns and batons chased down a man and kicked and beat him, shattering a relative calm in the tense city in western China. Gunfire was heard before and during the brief incident in Urumqi _ where recent ethnic unrest left 184 dead _ near one of the city's main Uighur neighborhoods. Some bystanders threw themselves to the ground and others fled, The Associated Press reported. One policeman was seen raising his rifle to strike the man. Beaten, the man in a blue shirt with blood on his right leg lay on the ground. Police formed a ring around him, pointing their guns up at surrounding buildings as if worried about retaliation. Hong Kong's radio RTHK reported on its Web site Monday that at least two police officers were shot and three Uighurs killed near a Uighur neighborhood. It did not give any more details. The Urumqi police telephone line rang busy all Monday. The incident came as authorities try to impose a sense of normality on Urumqi after the July 5 riots and subsequent unrest that also left 1,680 wounded. The death toll in China's worst ethnic violence in decades could rise as 74 of the more than 900 people still in hospitals have life-threatening wounds, the official Xinhua News Agency said. People ran into their homes and shops, slamming their doors. An armored personnel carrier and paramilitary police arrived on the scene, and police waved their guns and shouted for people to get off the streets. Security vehicles previously deployed on People's Square were no longer there Monday but helmeted riot police remained in the area. Small groups of paramilitary police with riot shields stood guard on street corners and helicopters flew over the city. Most roads leading to the Grand Bazaar market were reopened and in Uighur districts, more shops lifted their shutters, vendors pushed carts full of peaches and watermelon sellers sliced up their wares. Restaurant staff set up tables under trees next to the road. Xinhua said police manned checkpoints and searched buses for any suspects involved in the violence, and people were ordered to carry identification for police checks when traveling in Urumqi. It quoted the Urumqi Public Security Bureau as saying anyone without proper identification would be taken away to be interrogated. «Citizens are strictly banned from holding dangerous articles including batons or knives in urban streets or public venues,» the notice said. The move was to «prevent a tiny number of individual criminals from the riot who were still at large from seeking revenge,» it said, according to Xinhua.
