State media said at least 37 people - both Uighur and Han Chinese - were hospitalized with injuries. Adam Grode, an American Fulbright scholar studying in Urumqi, said he heard explosions and also saw a few people being carried off on stretchers and a Han Chinese man with blood on his shirt entering a hospital.

He said he saw police pushing people back with tear gas, fire hoses and batons, and protesters knocking over police barriers and smashing bus windows. "Every time the police showed some force, the people would jump the barriers and get back on the street. It was like a cat-and-mouse sort of game," said Grode, 26.

China Mobile phone service was suspended in the region "to help keep the peace and prevent the incident from spreading further," a customer service representative in Urumqi said. Restoration of service will depend on how the situation develops," said the woman who would give only her surname, Yang. Another provider, China Unicom, said there was no interruption of its service in Xinjiang.

The official Xinhua News Agency reported that "the situation was under control" by Monday morning and that police had shut down traffic in parts of the city as a precaution. Xinhua said at least four people were killed in the violence, in which the crowd attacked passers-by, burned or vandalized 30 buses and cars and interrupted traffic on some roads. The report said that 37 injured people had been treated at the Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital in Urumqi, and quoted a hospital official who spoke on condition of anonymity as saying those admitted were both Han and Uighur. Xinjiang's government accused Uighur exiles led by a former businesswoman now living in America, Rebiya Kadeer, of fomenting the violence via the telephone and Internet. Xinjiang Governor Nur Bekri said in a televised address early Monday that "Rebiya had phone conversations with people in China on July 5 in order to incite and Web sites ... were used to orchestrate the incitement and spread propaganda."

... contd.