BEIJING — Chinese police broke up a terror plot targeting the Beijing Olympics, and a flight crew foiled an apparent attempt to crash a Chinese jetliner in a separate case, officials said Sunday.
Wang Lequan, a top Communist Party official, said materials seized in a January raid in the Xinjiang regional capital, Urumqi, described a plot with a purpose “specifically to sabotage the staging of the Beijing Olympics.”
Wang cited no other evidence.
Xinjiang’s governor said a flight crew prevented an apparent attempt to crash a China Southern flight from Urumqi on Friday. Nur Bekri did not specifically label the incident a terrorist act, saying it remained under investigation. No passengers were injured and police were investigating, he said.
Wang said the group had been trained by and was following the orders of a separatist group based in Pakistan and Afghanistan called the East Turkestan Islamic Movement. East Turkestan is another name for Xinjiang.
Few details were available about the alleged attempt to crash the China Southern Airlines flight that left Urumqi on Friday.
Bekri said the crew responded and brought the plane to an emergency landing in Lanzhou. He said it continued to its original destination, Beijing, after about one hour.
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