Beijing: Authorities in China's restive Xinjiang region have conducted a mock drill of emergency response to a simulated terrorist bombing, a day after Beijing claimed to have unearthed a plot to attack the Olympics here.

The exercise to test the emergency response of medical institutions and authorities to a terror strike was held yesterday in Urumqi, the first of its kind in the regional capital of the largely Muslim populated Xinjiang region.

In the simulated scene, a terrorist in the guise of a patient detonated an explosive in a hospital, killing three or four people and injuring more than 30,with the blast also causing fire on a few facilities and spreading the poisonous gas to the wards.

The Urumqi government launched a public health emergency plan and within an hour set the explosion site in order, official Xinhua news agency said.

China s Ministry of Public Security had on Thursday claimed to have arrested 45 terrorists of two East Turkistan Movement backed groups, who had planned to kidnap athletes, foreign journalists and tourists during the Beijing Olympics.

Explosives, detonators and text materials to launch a "holy war" were recovered from the groups, the ministry had said, close on the heels of its recent claim that it had foiled a terror plot to crash a Beijing-bound passenger aircraft.
Source : PTI