China has arrested more suspects over clashes in the ethnically divided region of Xinjiang last week that left 21 people dead, state media said Monday. China blamed the violence in the western Chinese region on "terrorists," but rights groups say the charge is used to justify the authorities' use of force against members of the Muslim minority. State-run broadcaster CCTV said Monday that "another group of terrorists has been arrested", citing senior security official Meng Hongwei and adding that police had seized weapons and flags belonging to a separatist group.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has called for stability in the ethnically-divided region of Xinjiang after clashes this week killed 21 people, state media reported on Friday. Xi's comments came after 15 police and social workers were killed in violence Tuesday, as well as six members of the mostly Muslim Uighur minority suspected of "terrorist plotting", local officials said.

Chinese authorities accused 'terrorists' in China's far west of setting a trap to kill policemen, state media said Thursday, after a US-based rights group dismissed terrorism claims. Twenty-one people were killed in violence in west China's Xinjiang region on Tuesday, local government officials said, adding that six members of the ethnic Uighur minority shot dead in the clashes were suspected of terrorist plotting.

BEIJING (Reuters) - A confrontation involving axes, knives, at least one gun and ending with the burning down of a house left 21 people dead in China's troubled far-west region of Xinjiang, a government spokeswoman said on Wednesday, calling it a "terrorist attack". It was the deadliest violence in the region since July 2009, when Xinjiang's capital, Urumqi, was rocked by clashes between majority Han Chinese and minority Uighurs that killed nearly 200 people.