At least 367 dead after quake hits southwest China

BEIJING (Reuters) - A magnitude 6.3 earthquake struck southwestern China on Sunday, killing at least 367 people and leaving 1,881 injured in a remote area of Yunnan province, and causing thousands of buildings, including a school, to collapse.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake registered at a shallow depth of less than 1 mile (1.6 km). Chinese state media said it was felt most strongly in Yunnan as well as in the neighboring provinces of Guizhou and Sichuan.

The official Xinhua news agency said the epicenter was in Longtoushan town in Yunnan's mountainous Ludian county.

Communications have been seriously affected and rescuers have begun arriving on the scene, the report said.

Pictures posted online by state media showed troops stretchering people away and cars damaged by fallen bricks.

Many people rushed out of buildings onto the street after the quake hit, electricity supplies were cut and at least one school collapsed, Xinhua added, with more than 12,000 houses having collapsed and 30,000 sustaining damage.

Ludian resident Ma Liya told Xinhua the streets were like a "battlefield after bombardment".

The government is sending 2,000 tents, 3,000 folding beds, 3,000 quilts and 3,000 coats to the disaster zone, where heavy rain forecast for the coming days will add to the misery, the report said.

Ludian is home to some 265,900 people, Xinhua added.

This region of China is frequently struck by quakes, with one killing more than 1,400 in the same part of Yunnan in 1974.

A quake in Sichuan in 2008 killed almost 70,000 people.

(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Matt Driskill and Hugh Lawson)

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Censured over shelter deaths, Israel declares seven-hour Gaza truce

By Nidal al-Mughrabi and Dan Williams

GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel said it would unilaterally hold fire in most of the Gaza Strip on Monday to facilitate the entry of humanitarian aid and allow some of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced by an almost four-week-old war to go back to home.

The announcement, made first to Palestinian media, met with suspicion from Gaza's dominant Hamas Islamists and followed unusually strong censure from Washington at the apparent Israeli shelling on Sunday of a U.N.-run shelter that killed 10 people.

An Israeli defense official said the ceasefire, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m, would apply everywhere but areas of the southern town of Rafah where ground forces have intensified assaults after three soldiers died in a Hamas ambush there on Friday.

"If the truce is breached, the military will return fire during the declared duration of the truce," the official said.

The official said east Rafah was the only urban area in which troops and tanks were still present, having been withdrawn or redeployed near Gaza's border with Israel over the weekend.

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Smoke rises following what witnesses said was an Israeli air strike in Rafah in the southern Gaza St …

Israel is winding down its offensive in the absence of a mediated disengagement deal with Hamas. It says the military is close to completing its main objective of destroying cross-border infiltration tunnels from Gaza and prepared to resume strikes in response to any future attacks by the Palestinians.

Hamas, whose envoys are in Egypt for truce negotiations that Israel has shunned in anger at Friday's lethal ambush in Rafah, saw a possible ruse in the humanitarian truce announcement.

"The calm Israel declared is unilateral and aims to divert attention away from the Israeli massacres. We do not trust such a calm and we urge our people to exercise caution," said the group's spokesman, Sami Abu Zuhri.

Israel launched its offensive on July 8 following a surge in Hamas rocket salvoes. It escalated from air and naval barrages to overland incursions centered on Gaza's tunnel-riddled eastern frontier but also pushing into densely populated towns.

Gaza officials say 1,788 Palestinians, most of them civilians, have been killed and more than a quarter of the impoverished enclave's 1.8 million residents displaced. As many as 3,000 Palestinian homes have been destroyed or damaged.

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A Palestinian man reacts as he stands next to the wreckage of a house, which witnesses said was dest …

"DISGRACEFUL SHELLING"

Many of those evacuees took shelter in U.N.-run facilities, including a Rafah school where 10 people were killed on Sunday in what Gaza officials said was an Israeli air strike.

Israel said it was investigating the incident and that it may have been linked to an attempt by the military to kill gunmen from Hamas' kindred faction, Islamic Jihad, as they drove nearby.

International outcry crested against the Israelis.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon described the attack as a "moral outrage and a criminal act" and called for those responsible for the "gross violation of international humanitarian law" to be held accountable.

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Rescue workers search for victims as Palestinians gather around the wreckage of a house, which witne …

The United States said it was "appalled" by the "disgraceful shelling" and urged its Middle East ally to do more to prevent harm to civilians. Washington also called for an investigation into other, similar attacks on U.N. schools in Gaza.

Israel says it makes every effort to avoid non-combatant casualties and that Hamas invites these by launching rockets from and entrenching gunmen inside congested civilian areas.

"Hamas has an interest in Gaza residents suffering, thinking that the world will blame Israel for their suffering," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said in a statement on Monday, adding that Israel was allowing foreign aid shipments to enter the Palestinian territory.

The statement said Hamas had further inflamed the humanitarian crisis by turning U.N. facilities into "terrorist hotspots". The main U.N. agency in Gaza, UNRWA, says it has found rockets in three of its schools.

Israel has lost 64 soldiers in combat and three civilians to Palestinian cross-border shelling that has emptied many of its southern villages. Iron Dome interceptors, air raid sirens and public shelters have helped stem Israeli casualties from the Gazan rockets.

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A Palestinian woman carries belongings as she walks over the rubble of buildings destroyed by what p …

Egyptian truce mediation, supported by the United States and the United Nations and also involving Qatar, Turkey and Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, has been complicated by the dramatically divergent terms set by Israel and Hamas.

Israel has said Gaza must be stripped of tunnels and rocket stocks. Hamas rules this out, and demands an easing of the crippling Gaza blockade enforced by both Israel and Egypt, which consider the Palestinian Islamists a security threat.

In Cairo on Sunday, Palestinian delegates said they also wanted Israel to quit Gaza, facilitate reconstruction of the battered territory and release Palestinian prisoners.

The Israelis, however, have shown little interest in resuming negotiations after blaming Hamas for violating Friday's truce with the Rafah ambush - an accusation echoed by the United States and the United Nations, though disputed by Hamas.

(Writing by Dan Williams; Editing by Sandra Maler)

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U.S. reconnaissance plane crosses into Sweden to avoid Russians - NY Times

(Reuters) - A U.S. reconnaissance plane crossed into Swedish airspace last month as it sought to avoid being intercepted by Russian fighters, the New York Times reported on Sunday, citing U.S. military officials.

The episode occurred on July 18 when Russian aircraft approached an Air Force RC-135 electronic surveillance plane as it was flying in what U.S. officials said was international airspace over the Baltic Sea, the Times said.

"The aircraft commander, acting in a professional and safe manner, maneuvered the aircraft to avoid a possible encounter by Russian aircraft," the United States European Command said in a statement, according to the Times.

Ties between the United States and Russia have plunged to their lowest level since the end of the Cold War over the crisis in Ukraine, which Washington accuses Moscow of fanning with weapons and support for rebels fighting the Kiev government.

The United States has expanded its intelligence-gathering in the region, including reconnaissance missions by RC-135 aircraft, the Times said.

It said that according to Swedish news media, the episode last month occurred as the RC-135 aircraft was flying near Kaliningrad, a heavily militarized Russian enclave between Poland and Lithuania that includes a major port for the Russian Baltic fleet.

After being approached by Russian aircraft, the RC-135 pilot sought to avoid the encounter by maneuvering his aircraft into Swedish airspace, flying over Gotland Island.

Sweden is not a member of NATO, and the European Command said in its statement that the RC-135 had been directed toward Swedish territory "incorrectly by U.S. personnel," the Times reported.

The plane left Swedish airspace after Swedish air traffic controllers informed the aircraft of the mistake, the newspaper said.

(Reporting by Eric Beech in Washington; Editing by Eric Walsh)

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Refugee conventions a tool for 'death voyages': Australian minister

By Matt Siegel

SYDNEY (Reuters) - The U.N. refugee conventions have become a tool to facilitate people-smuggling "death voyages", Australia's immigration minister said on Monday, amid mounting criticism of the country's hardline asylum seeker policies.

Under laws aimed at stopping migrants reaching Australia by boat, asylum seekers are sent to camps in Papua New Guinea and the tiny South Pacific nation of Nauru where they face long periods of detention while they are processed.

Immigration Minister Scott Morrison defended those policies in an interview with Sydney's 2GB Radio, arguing that years of poor legal interpretation had distorted the conventions.

"Our courts draw on all of their interpretations, and what started out being a pretty sensible document over time has had layer upon layer upon layer and it is now being used as a tool by people smugglers to basically run death voyages," he said.

The comments came in response to growing concern over the treatment of 157 Sri Lankan asylum seekers, transferred on Saturday from the Australian mainland to a detention center on Nauru in what lawyers say was a secret nighttime airlift.

A boat carrying the mostly Tamil migrants was intercepted by the Australian navy late in June and the passengers were detained at sea for a month before being brought ashore last week for questioning by Indian officials.

But Hugh de Kretser, a lawyer for the detainees, said he had been denied proper access to his clients and rejected claims he had advised them not to meet Indian officials, which Morrison says was the basis for their transfer.

"To characterize the level of access we've had as anything proper, in terms of our ability to advise our clients about their options and what was proposed in relation to them, is completely wrong," he told reporters.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott's conservative government says the policies are needed to save lives at sea and protect Australia's sovereignty.

But the policies have drawn criticism from human rights groups and the United Nations, which has raised concerns that Australia could be in violation of its treaty obligations.

A group of prominent Christian leaders last week accused Morrison of committing "state-sanctioned child abuse", while a former detention center doctor said he was told to cover up evidence that children held in the camps were suffering from widespread mental illness caused by their confinement.[ID:nL4N0Q527H][ID:nL4N0Q63RL]

(Editing by Clarence Fernandez)

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Fire at Petrochina's Lanzhou refinery after leak

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Firemen are fighting a blaze at PetroChina's subsidiary refinery and petrochemical plant in northwest China, company officials said on Monday.

The fire that broke out at 8.39 a.m. local time (0039 GMT) was triggered by a leak at an 300,000 tonne-per-year air separation unit, official Xinhua News Agency reported.

A Beijing-based PetroChina media official said so far no casualties have been reported.

It was not immediately clear if other main production facilities were affected by the fire.

The Lanzhou plant, in northwestern Gansu province, is one of the country's oil refining hubs. It operates crude refining capacity of just over 200,000 barrels per day and also an affiliated petrochemical complex.

On Saturday, China suffered its worst industrial accident in a year when an explosion killed at least 69 people and injured more than 120 at a factory that makes wheels for U.S. carmakers, including General Motors.

(Reporting by Fayen Wong and Chen Aizhu; Editing by Michael Perry)

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Soldier feared abducted is dead, Israel says

By Ori Lewis and Nidal al-Mughrabi

JERUSALEM/GAZA (Reuters) - Israel on Sunday declared dead a soldier feared abducted by Hamas Islamist militants in the Gaza Strip and said it would continue to fight even after the army completes destroying cross-border tunnels used by Palestinian fighters to attack its territory.

As Israeli television showed live footage of some tanks withdrawing from Gaza in an apparent winding down of the 26-day campaign, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Hamas would pay an "intolerable price" if it continued to attack Israel.

It was determined that Hadar Goldin, 23, the soldier Israel had feared Hamas militants abducted on Friday, was killed in action during an operation in the southern Gaza Strip, an army statement said.

"A special committee led by the Israel Defence Forces Chief Rabbi, announced the death of the IDF infantry officer of the Givati Brigade, Lieutenant Hadar Goldin, who was killed in battle in the Gaza Strip on Friday, August 1, 2014," part of the army statement said.

Hamas' armed wing said on Saturday it had no clear indication on Goldin's whereabouts and that he may have been killed during an ambush in the southern Gaza Strip in which two other Israeli soldiers were killed.

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An Israeli soldier checks a tank near the border with Gaza August 2, 2014. REUTERS/Siegfried Modola

Israel began its air and naval offensive against Gaza on July 8 following a surge of cross-border rocket salvoes by Hamas and other guerrillas, later escalating into ground incursions.

Shelling exchanges continued on Saturday, pushing the Gaza death toll given by Palestinian officials to 1,675, most of them civilians. Israel has confirmed that 64 soldiers have died in combat, while Palestinian shelling has also killed three civilians in Israel.

More than 30 tunnels and dozens of access shafts have been unearthed and were being blown up, the military said.

"Our understanding is that our objectives, most importantly the destruction of the tunnels, are close to completion," a military spokesman, Lieutenant-Colonel Peter Lerner, said.

Netanyahu said in a televised speech on Saturday evening that military action would continue even after that goal was achieved.

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Palestinians stand atop the wreckage of a house, which witnesses said was destroyed by an Israeli ai …

"After completing the anti-tunnel operation, the IDF will act and continue to act, in accordance with our security needs and only according to our defense needs, until we achieve our objective of restoring security to you, Israel's citizens," he said.

'PAY FOR EVERY MINUTE'

A Hamas spokesman said: "Netanyahu will pay for every minute he spends carrying out more aggression against our people."

Several ceasefires between Israel and Hamas, the Islamist movement that dominates the Gaza Strip, have failed to take hold or quickly collapsed, most recently on Friday after the ambush in which Goldin and the two other soldiers were killed.

In Cairo, a Palestinian delegation arrived for new truce talks, which would include Hamas' demand that Egypt ease movement across its border with blockaded Gaza. Turning its back on those negotiations, Israel said it would not send envoys as scheduled.

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Palestinians wheel a woman, whom medics said was wounded by Israeli shelling, outside a hospital in  …

"They (Hamas) cannot be trusted to keep their word. They cannot stop (firing) because, for them, a ceasefire at this stage, whether by arrangement or not by arrangement, would mean acknowledging the worst possible defeat," Deputy Foreign Minister Tzachi Hanegbi told Israel's Channel Two TV.

Hamas, its guerrillas massively outgunned by a Jewish state it considers an eternal enemy, said it would prevail.

Any unilateral pullout by Israel would mean "it has failed to achieve any of its goals and would be a clear defeat for the occupation army and for its leaders," Hamas' bloc in the Palestinian parliament said in a statement. "Gaza resisted, endured and will achieve victory."

'EXPLOSIONS EVERYWHERE'

Israel said Palestinians on Saturday launched 86 rockets across the border, most of which missed their intended targets and fell harmlessly wide, while seven were shot down by its Iron Dome interceptor, including over Tel Aviv.

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An Israeli tank is seen near the Israeli border with the Gaza Strip August 2, 2014. REUTERS/Baz Ratn …

Crowded Gazan towns close to the Israeli border have seen devastating clashes and the flight of tens of thousands of Palestinians as tanks and troops swept in to confront dug-in guerrillas.

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights said 520,000 people had been displaced by the fighting - more than a quarter of Gaza's population.

Israel on Saturday told evacuees from Beit Lahiya, a northern town of 70,000 residents, they could return, but fear still gripped the townspeople.

"No one has told us to go back," said Talab Manna, a 30-year-old father of seven camped out at a U.N.-run school serving as a refugee haven. "We can't risk going back and being bombed by the Israeli forces."

Hamas had long threatened to capture Israelis for a prisoner swap. In 2011, Israel released more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Gilad Shalit, a soldier snatched by Hamas five years earlier. Israel has twice freed prisoners for the bodies of soldiers held by Lebanon's Hezbollah militia.

The Rafah clash in which Goldin was initially reported to have been captured, triggered Israeli shelling from the middle of Friday morning that killed 150 Palestinians. By afternoon, Israel declared an end to the truce - which was meant to have lasted 72 hours.

Rafah residents said they had received recorded telephone warnings from Israel to stay indoors during a barrage that wreaked widespread ruin.

"It was like an action movie - explosions everywhere, cars flying up in flames, people crushed under houses that were bombed," local resident Bassim Abed told Reuters.

(Additional reporting by Giles Elgood and Dan Williams in Jerusalem and Mostafa Hashem and Oliver Holmes in Cairo, Writing by Ori Lewis; Editing by Peter Cooney)

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Factory blast in eastern China kills at least 69

By Fayen Wong

KUNSHAN China (Reuters) - China suffered its worst industrial accident in a year on Saturday when an explosion killed at least 69 people and injured more than 120 at a factory that makes wheels for U.S. carmakers, including General Motors.

The blast in the wealthy eastern province of Jiangsu occurred around 7:30 a.m. in Kunshan city, about an hour's drive from Shanghai, after an explosion ripped through a workshop that polishes wheel hubs.

A preliminary investigation suggested the blast at Kunshan Zhongrong Metal Products Co Ltd. was triggered when a flame was lit in a dust-filled room, the local government said at a news conference, describing the incident as a serious safety breach.

State news agency Xinhua said two company representatives had been taken into police custody and that the death toll had risen to 69 by late Saturday.

Xinhua quoted Chinese President Xi Jinping as demanding a full inquiry into the blast and saying those found responsible must be punished.

Survivors with charred skin were seen being wheeled into ambulances as residents recalled hearing the explosion from two kilometers away. At the site of the blast, television images showed wrecked walls and heavy machinery that had been hurled through windows.

"We heard a really loud blast at about 7 a.m. this morning so we rushed out of our dormitories," said Zhou Xu, a 26-year-old working at a plant across the site.

"First the ambulance came, then as the news surfaced in the media, many families - especially the wives - rushed to the site to see if their husbands were okay."

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Medical personnel transport a victim of a factory explosion at a hospital in Kunshan, Jiangsu provin …

A security guard from an adjacent factory, who declined to be named, said the impact from the explosion was so great that it shattered the windows of his guard house, located about 500 meters away from the site of the blast.

"80 PERCENT BURNS"

Images online and on state television showed large plumes of black smoke billowing from a white low-rise building. Many of the injured, who appeared badly burnt in scorched clothing, were shown lying on wooden pallets, waiting to be stretchered on to trucks, public buses and ambulances.

Four emergency blood-donation centers were set up in the city to assist casualties, some of whom will be taken to Shanghai and other nearby cities for treatment later on Saturday, state television said.

Urged by President Xi to spare no efforts in the rescue works, Kunshan's government said it was bringing in doctors from Shanghai and other regions.

"In my 20 years of work, I've never seen so many patients with burns on over 80 percent of their bodies," a senior unnamed doctor was quoted as saying on the Weibo microblog account of China's CCTV.

The doctor said the final death toll could be "very high".

China, the world's second-largest economy, has a poor record on workplace safety. Workers are often poorly trained or ill-equipped to protect themselves from industrial accidents.

By early afternoon, the police had cordoned off the aging factory and blocked media access to the local hospital.

Authorities had also cleaned up the factory's exterior. A crowd of bystanders and a row of fire-trucks parked in the compound were the only outward signs of the calamity that had occurred hours earlier.

Kunshan Zhongrong could not be reached for a comment. Its website said the firm is wholly owned by an unidentified foreign investor, employs 450 workers and counts General Motors and other U.S. companies as clients.

The Kunshan government said 264 workers were at the site when the explosion struck and 44 died immediately. Xinhua cited officials as saying that the number of injured totaled 187.

"Of course, the foreign owner of the company will shoulder the responsibility," said Duan Shenyi, a user of China's microblog Weibo said on Saturday. "But because we lack a workers' union, we do not have enough supervision of companies."

A fire at a poultry slaughterhouse in the northeast province of Jilin in June 2013 killed 120 people. The blaze was blamed on poor management, a lack of government oversight and locked or blocked exits.

(Additional reporting by Aly Sung in KUNSHAN and Judy Hua in BEIJING; Writing by Koh Gui Qing; Editing by Gareth Jones)

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Sunni insurgents, Kurds battle over north Iraq town

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Islamic State militants fought Kurdish forces on Saturday for the northern Iraqi town of Zumar located near an oil field and the Syrian border amid conflicting reports of who was in control.

Jabbar Yawar, secretary general of the Kurdish peshmerga fighters, said his forces controlled Zumar and reinforcements were on the way.

But four residents in different parts of the town said by telephone that Islamic State fighters were in control.

"Many Islamic State vehicles are wandering the town of Zumar and I can also see the flags on top of buildings," said one resident.

The group formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant staged a lighting advance through northern Iraq in June, seizing large swathes of land in the biggest challenge to the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

Control of Zumar by Islamic State fighters would give them access to the small Ain Zalah oil field and a nearby refinery. The insurgents have already seized four oil fields, which help fund their operations.

A Kurdish police official in Zumar said Islamic State fighters in pickup trucks mounted with weapons attacked the town from three directions early on Saturday. There were no immediate details of casualties.

Islamic State's offensive has whipped up sectarian tensions and threatened to dismember Iraq. The sectarian conflict poses the gravest danger to the OPEC member's stability since the 2003 fall of Saddam Hussein after a U.S.-led invasion.

Shi'ite militias and Kurdish fighters now rival the U.S.-trained and funded Iraqi army in their ability to challenge the insurgents.

Islamic State has declared a medieval-style caliphate spanning parts of Iraq and Syria under its control, alarming other Arab states who fear their advance will embolden militants on their patch.

The Sunni insurgents have stalled their advance towards Baghdad just before the town of Samarra, 100 km (62 miles) north of the capital.

(Reporting by Raheem Salman and Ahmed Rasheed; Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Lynne O'Donnell)

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Ukrainian forces advance in east as Russia, West squabble

By Timothy Heritage and Maria Tsvetkova

KIEV/DONETSK Ukraine (Reuters) - Government forces tightened the noose around the main stronghold of pro-Russian rebels in east Ukraine on Saturday and, with diplomacy stalled, Moscow and the West stepped up their war of words.

The seizure of Krasnogorovka and Staromikhailovka, towns just outside Donetsk, brought the army to the edge of one of the last cities still in rebel hands following its advances in the past month. The other is Luhansk, near the border with Russia.

Shelling near the area where a Malaysian airliner was downed last month forced international experts to stop their search for victims at one part of the crash site, but a local ceasefire enabled them to work unhindered at the main part.

Working with sniffer dogs, they recovered more human remains and personal belongings for examination, officials said.

Diplomatic efforts to end the wider conflict, the worst standoff between Moscow and the West since the Cold War ended in 1991, show no sign of progress.

British Prime Minister David Cameron said NATO must rethink its ties with Moscow and called for it to overhaul itself to be better able to defend member states from a potential Russian military threat.

"Six months into the Russia-Ukraine crisis we must agree on long-term measures to strengthen our ability to respond quickly to any threat, to reassure those allies who fear for their own country's security and to deter any Russian aggression," he wrote in a letter to fellow alliance leaders and NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

U.S. President Barack Obama also vented his frustration with Russia after speaking to President Vladimir Putin by telephone on Friday. Obama told reporters the United States had done "everything that we can do," short of going to war, to persuade Putin of the need to resolve the crisis diplomatically.

"But sometimes people don't always act rationally, and they don't always act based on their medium- or long-term interests," he said.

RUSSIA SEES EU "DOUBLE STANDARDS"

The United States and the European Union imposed new sanctions on Moscow this week after accusing Putin of failing to use his influence with the separatists to end the fighting in the mainly Russian-speaking east.

Putin denies arming the rebels and accuses the West of pursuing a policy of containment against Moscow, using a Cold War-era phrase to suggest Washington wants to reduce Russia's global influence.

In a new attack on Western policy, Russia's Foreign Ministry accused the EU of "double standards", saying it was punishing the Russian defense sector with the latest sanctions but "on the quiet" had ended restrictions on sales of military technology and equipment to Ukraine.

"We call again on our EU colleagues to follow sound logic and not conjecture and goading from Washington," the Foreign Ministry said, questioning the EU's "dubious political goals."

The EU overcame the reservations of some business leaders, particularly in Germany, to agree the latest sanctions. Indicating this would have an impact on the EU's largest economy, the head of Germany's Ifo institute said economic growth would shrink towards zero in the second quarter because of the Ukraine crisis and the new sanctions.

The rebellion in east Ukraine began in mid-April, two months after Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich was ousted after he shifted policy away from the EU towards Moscow, and one month after Russia annexed the Crimea peninsula from Ukraine.

The army has been making advances against the separatists since President Petro Poroshenko stepped up the military campaign against them after his election in May, and fighting intensified after the Malaysian airliner was downed on July 17.

The United States says the separatists probably shot down the plane by mistake with a Russian-supplied missile. The rebels and Moscow deny the accusation and blame the disaster, in which 298 people were killed, on Kiev.

The Ukrainian military reported three cases of shooting from across the border with Russia overnight, a charge it has leveled at Moscow increasingly often.

Moscow denies such accusations, and Russia's RIA news agency quoted border guards as saying nine shells had been fired from Ukrainian territory onto Russian soil.

(Additional reporting by Pavel Polityuk and Aleksandar Vasovic in Kiev, Alexander Winning in Moscow and Philip Blenkinsop in Brussels; Writing by Timothy Heritage; Editing by Janet Lawrence and Robin Pomeroy)

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Almost 100 killed during attacks in China's Xinjiang last week

BEIJING (Reuters) - Almost 100 people were killed during attacks on a police station and government offices in China's far western region of Xinjiang early last week, state media said Sunday, giving fresh details on one of the worst incidents of unrest in years.

The official Xinhua news agency said 59 "terrorists" were gunned down by security forces in Shache county in Xinjiang's far south, while 37 civilians were killed in the attacks on July 28.

State media had reported the incident a day later, saying dozens of people had been killed when knife-wielding attackers had staged assaults in two towns in the region.

It is unclear why the government waited so long to announce detailed casualties, though bad news has sometimes been covered up or delayed in the past.

"Police confiscated long knives, axes as well as the terrorists' banners that exhorted 'holy war'," Xinhua said.

Xinjiang, home to the Muslim Uighur people, who speak a Turkic language, has been beset for years by violence which the government blames on Islamist militants or separatists who it says want an independent state called East Turkestan.

Exiled Uighur groups and human rights activists say the government's repressive policies in Xinjiang, including controls on Islam, have provoked unrest - a claim Beijing denies.

The attack took place at the end of the holy month of Ramadan, which officials had tried to get Muslims in Xinjiang to ignore, in an indication of what rights groups say is discrimination targeting the Uighurs.

Hundreds have been killed in Xinjiang in the past year and a half, and the last week saw a series of deadly incidents, including the murder of a prominent pro-government imam at a major mosque in the old Silk Road city of Kashgar.

(Reporting By Ben Blanchard; Additional reporting by Norihiko Shirouzu; Editing by Matt Driskill and Simon Cameron-Moore)

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