China Holds Its Biggest Anti-Terrorism Exercises: Report

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
October 20th, 2006, 05:01

China on Oct. 19 wrapped up its biggest-ever anti-terrorism exercises, which involved over 2,700 policemen and soldiers, state press said.

The three days of exercises in the northern Inner Mongolia region simulated international terrorist groups infiltrating China and stealing high technology and equipment from a “major industrial city,” Xinhua news agency reported.

The exercise also focused on a joint terrorist response to quell bomb attacks and the kidnapping of hostages in Inner Mongolia’s Baotou city under a simulated siege, it said.

Besides public security forces, China’s para-military police and the People’s Liberation Army were involved in the exercises, which were also coordinated with the aid of 20 departments and ministries, the report said.

They were the biggest anti-terrorism exercise China had ever carried out, according to Xinhua.

During the exercises tanks, armed personnel carriers, bomb disposal systems and other anti-terrorism equipment were employed, the report said.

”These exercises reflect the new progress that has been achieved in the anti-terrorism work in Inner Mongolia,” Xinhua quoted Li Wei, the head of the Public Security Ministry’s anti-terrorism department, as saying.

China’s northern Inner Mongolian region is largely populated by ethnic Mongolians, who have at times violently opposed China’s rule of the area that was annexed during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).

But such opposition has not been as virulent as anti-Chinese opposition in China’s western-most region of Xinjiang, populated largely by Uighur Muslims, or in its Himalayan region of Tibet.