BEIJING - TWO 'terrorists' have been sentenced to death for a deadly attack on police in a heavily Muslim Chinese city ahead of the Beijing Olympics, the official Xinhua news agency reported on Wednesday.

The men were convicted of murder following the Aug 4 attack in China's north-west Xinjiang region that left 17 people dead and another 15 injured, according to a dispatch from Xinhua, which cited the Supreme Court.

Xinhua described the two men, Abdurahman Azat, 33, and Kurbanjan Hemit, 28, as 'terrorists' and said they had also been found guilty of illegally making guns, ammunition and explosives.

'The two conducted the terrorist attack to sabotage the Beijing Olympic Games,' Xinhua reported, citing a Supreme Court statement.

No other details were given, officials at the Supreme Court were not immediately available to comment and a spokeswoman for the city of Kashgar where the attack took place said she was not aware of the sentencing.

According to previous official Chinese accounts, two Islamic separatists drove a truck at a group of police officers, then assaulted them with explosives and knives in downtown Kashgar.

China had previously said the attack was part of a wave of deadly unrest by Islamic militants in Xinjiang aimed at disrupting the nation in the lead-up to the Beijing Olympics, which took place from August 8 to 24.

Xinhua had previously reported the two were from Xinjiang's ethnic Uighur group, a Turkic-speaking people who have long chafed at Chinese rule.

Xinjiang, a vast area that borders Central Asia, has about 8.3 million Uighurs, and many are unhappy with what they say has been decades of repressive communist Chinese rule.

Two short-lived East Turkestan republics emerged in Xinjiang in the 1930s and 1940s, at a time when central government control in China was weakened by civil war and Japanese invasion. -- AFP