Traffic and shopping resumed in Urumqi on Thursday after days of ethnic violence in the western city killed at least 156 people, and China's alarmed leaders vowed to punish those behind the attacks.

The hundreds of troops that had camped out in the central part of the Xinjiang capital for the past three days were gone, but paramilitary police still guarded People's Square and military helicopters flew over the city of 2.3 million.

Crowds of Han Chinese, China's dominant ethnic group, cheered as trucks full of police and covered in banners reading "We must defeat the terrorists" and "Oppose ethnic separatism and hatred" rumbled by.

The region's worst ethnic violence in decades has already forced President Hu Jintao to cut short a trip to Italy, where he was to participate in a Group of Eight summit and hold talks with President Barack Obama. It was an embarrassing move for a leader who wants to show that China has a harmonious society as it prepares to celebrate the 60th anniversary of communist rule in October.

Public Security Minister Meng Jiangzhu has said "key rioters should be punished with the utmost severity."

Xinjiang - a sprawling, oil-rich territory that borders several Central Asian countries - is home to the Uighur ethnic minority, largely Muslim, who rioted Sunday and attacked Han Chinese after holding a protest that was ended by police.

Officials have said 156 people were killed and more than 1,100 people hurt as the Turkic-speaking Uighurs ran amok in the city, beating and stabbing. The Uighurs (pronounced WEE-gers) say trigger-happy security forces gunned down many of the protesters. Officials have yet to give an ethnic breakdown of those killed.

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