After around 130 Han Chinese were brutally slaughtered in the Urumqi riots of Sunday July 5, thousands staged angry demonstrations in the city center. On Tuesday afternoon, several hundred Han Chinese, seeking revenge, attacked ethnically mixed neighborhoods in the south of the city where most Uygurs live.

Faced with a situation that threatened to degenerate into tit-for-tat ethnic violence, the government declared martial law and deployed troops in a peace line to protect Uygur neighborhoods. The disorders were quelled and Han crowds dispersed, but not before some incursions took place.

Witnesses in the Limin Lane area told China.org.cn that the neighborhood suffered three successive attacks by Han civilians before the People's Armed Police were able to restore order. A peace line manned by heavily armed troops has been established to control entry from majority-Han areas to the north, and life is beginning to return to normal.

Rezalan, a Uygur woman, demonstrates how hundreds of Han Chinese used clubs and machetes as they attacked Limin Lane, an ethnically-mixed neighborhood in the southern part of Urumqi, on the afternoon of Tuesday July 7. After three attacks took place at roughly hourly intervals, the People's Armed Police managed to restore order and prevent further incursions. [John Sexton, China.org.cn]