Beijing: An exiled group struggling for an independent homeland in China''s far northwest questioned today (Jan 9, 2007) the motives for a police raid on an alleged Islamist terrorist camp there that left 19 people dead.

China''s state-run press announced on yesterday (Jan 9,2007) that police last week destroyed an Islamic terrorist training camp in the remote Xinjiang region, which is heavily populated by the Muslim Uighur ethnic minority.

Eighteen suspected terrorists and one policeman were killed in a gun battle during the raid, sources said, as it warned of links between the renegade group and Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network.

"The alleged training camp belonging to the so-called ‘East Turkestan Islamic Movement' was located in the Pamir mountain region bordering Pakistan and Afghanistan, "said sources.

Sources.said the group may have infiltrated the region with Al-Qaeda''''s help, as it reported that 22 hand grenades were seized and evidence uncovered of the group attempting to produce up to 1,500 more such devices.

But a leading exiled Uighur organisation that has been seeking independence in Xinjiang doubted Tuesday the veracity of the report.

It also accused Beijing of using the global war on terror to renege on promises of autonomy for the restive region.

"We do not know what happened in this village, except for the Chinese government version," Alim Seytoff, the Washington-based executive chairman of the World Uighur Congress, told sources.

"The Chinese government has failed to provide substantial evidence to the international community to prove it is facing an international terrorist threat.

"For all we know, this may have been something artificially created by the Chinese government to prove the terrorist threat," he said.

The World Uighur Congress has no known links to the East Turkestan Islamic Movement.

But Zhao Yongshen, China''s vice head of the Xinjiang anti-terrorist force, said the threat of terrorism was real and maintained that up to 160 people had been killed in Xinjiang by terrorists over the past 'several dozen years.'

"In the current period and in the near future, East Turkestan terrorism forces will remain the main terrorist threat facing China," Zhao said in a statement on the Xinjiang government website on yesterday (Jan 8, 2007).

East Turkestan refers to two short-lived independent republics that were established in the Xinjiang region by Uighurs between 1930 and 1949.