CHINESE state television showed rioters throwing rocks at police and overturning a police car, and smoke billowing from burning vehicles.

'I personally saw several Han people being stabbed. Many people on buses were scared witless,' Mr Zhang Wanxin, a Urumqi resident, told Reuters by telephone.

Mr Alim Seytoff, of the Uighur American Association in Washington DC, e-mailed pictures showing hundreds of locals confronting police in Urumqi, armoured riot-control vehicles patrolling streets, wounded and bloodied civilians lying on streets, and ranks of anti-riot police with shields and clubs.

Almost half of Xinjiang's 20 million people are Uighurs.

The population of Urumqi is mostly Han Chinese, and the city is under tight police security even in normal times. -- REUTERS