REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, BEIJING - Six people died in explosions and another six were shot dead by police in fresh violence in China's restive western region of Xinjiang, home to the ethnic minority of Turkish Muslim Uighurs, state media Xinhua reported. The case is under investigation, according to Xinhua.

Assailants threw explosives at police in Xinhe county in the Aksu prefecture on Friday during a clash in which police killed six of the attackers, according to the Tianshan news portal run by the regional Communist Party.

Xinhua called the violence an act of terrorism, but a spokesman of an advocacy group for the Uighurs said it was the latest example of brutal suppression by Chinese authorities. Dilxat Raxit, spokesman for the Munich-based World Uyghur Congress, said the clashes started when angry Uighurs protested the sale of whole pigs in the market on Friday, a Muslim holy day, and that the hair salon was a brothel in disguise.

"The Chinese vendors used to sell pork by jin (pound), but now they are hanging up the entire carcasses," Dilxat Raxit said then added that police opened fire on the crowds and on a vehicle that was leaving, causing its fuel tank to explode.

"It is not possible for the Uighurs to have weapons, given the tight controls by the authorities," Dilxat Raxit said.

Xinjiang is home to low-intensity insurgency by the native Uighurs against what they see as discrimination and religious suppression by China's majority Han people. The government has responded with a crackdown on what it calls terrorism incited by separatists who are influenced by Islam.