Chinese police have thwarted five terrorism groups plotting attacks on the Beijing Olympic Games.

In the first six months of the year, police detained 82 people in the country's northwest Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region who were planning to sabotage the Olympics, said Chen Zhuangwei, police chief of the regional capital of Urumqi.

"Police in Urumqi also detained 66 gang members of the 'three evil forces' of terrorism, separatism and extremism, and destroyed 41 'holy-war' training bases from January to June," he said.

During the period, local police cracked 16 cases involving the Falun Gong cult, detained 25 suspects and destroyed seven illegal workshops containing reactionary propaganda material for Falun Gong, he said.

Local police also arrested 217 members from 51 gangs accused of violent crimes and seized 268 wanted suspects, he said.

The number of criminal cases had dropped 12.6 percent compared with the same period last year, Chen said. The Olympic torch relay went without a hitch in Urumqi on June 17 and that was a "significant victory" in the first phase of Olympic security work in Xinjiang.

"The second phase has begun," he said. "All police must continue to work hard and increase the fight against terrorism, the 'three evil forces,' criminal cases, drug crimes and other violent crimes in the cause of Olympic security and to ensure the stability of the regional capital," he said.

On Tuesday, local police raided a hideout of 15 suspects from a "holy-war" training group in Urumqi, shooting and killing five terrorists, injuring two and seizing another eight.

The 15 suspects, five women and 10 men, were all Uygurs. They were armed with knives and threatened to "perish together" with the officers when cornered, a police spokesman said.

Police had been searching for three men in the group after they were suspected to have stabbed and seriously wounded a Han woman at a Urumqi beauty salon on May 23.

Vice Minister of Public Security Yang Huanning said last week that the Olympic Games would be a target for various anti-China and hostile forces. These people were trying "every possible way" to sabotage the Games.

Beijing will start to deploy security staff at hundreds of checkpoints on road and rail entries to the city from next week.

All six countries of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization pledged last week to actively assist China in security work for the Games.

(Xinhua News Agency July 11, 2008)