hina said Monday it had launched an international manhunt for the alleged mastermind behind an attack at a train station last month blamed on extremists from the Muslim Turkic Uighur ethnic group.
The official China Daily newspaper said a request had been submitted to Interpol for the arrest of Ismail Yusup and an unspecified number of associates.
Beijing says an organized militancy with elements based overseas is behind a rising number of terrorist attacks in the country. However, little evidence has been provided to back up the claim and many analysts doubt such an organization exists in a form that would allow it to organize attacks.
China had previously said the attack, in which explosives and knives were used, was carried out by two religious extremists who were killed in the blast.
East Turkistan is the name used for Xinjiang by some members of the region's native Uighur (pronounced WEE'-gur) ethnic group, extremists among which have been fighting for years a low-intensity insurgency against Chinese rule.
The U.S. initially placed the East Turkistan Islamic Movement on a terrorist watch list following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, but later quietly removed it amid doubts that it existed in any organized manner. It is still listed as a terrorist group by the United Nations, over which China has considerable sway as one of five permanent veto-holding members of the Security Council.