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Along with Tibet, Xinjiang is one of the most politically sensitive regions in China. It is strategically located at the borders of Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, has abundant oil reserves and is China's largest natural gas-producing region.

But controlling the anger on both sides of the ethnic divide will now make controlling Xinjiang, with its gas reserves and trade and energy ties to central Asia, all the more testing for the ruling Communist Party.

Xinjiang has long been a tightly controlled hotbed of ethnic tensions, fostered by an economic gap between many Uighurs and Han Chinese, government controls on religion and culture and an influx of Han migrants who now are the majority in most key cities, including Urumqi. There were attacks in the region before and during last year's Summer Olympics in Beijing.

Riot police on Tuesday fired tear gas to try to break up rock-throwing Han and Uighur protesters who clashed in the capital of China's Muslim region of Xinjiang two days after bloody clashes killed 156 and wounded more than 1,000. Hundreds of protesters from China's predominant Han ethnic group, many clutching meat cleavers, metal pipes and wooden clubs, smashed shops owned by Uighurs, a Turkic largely Islamic people who share linguistic and cultural bonds with Central Asia.

Along with Tibet, Xinjiang is one of the most politically sensitive regions in China and in both places the government has sought to maintain its grip by controlling religious and cultural life while promising economic growth and prosperity.

Xinjiang has long been a hotbed of ethnic tensions, fostered by a yawning economic gap between Uighurs and Han Chinese, government controls on religion and culture and an influx of Han Chinese migrants who now are the majority in most key cities. Beijing has poured cash into exploiting Xinjiang's rich oil and gas deposits and consolidating its hold on a strategically vital frontierland that borders Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia, but Uighurs say migrant Han are the main beneficiaries.

Violence in China's restive western region of Xinjiang has left at least 140 people dead and more than 800 people injured, state media say.Several hundred people were also arrested after a protest turned violent in the city of Urumqi on Sunday.

The protest was reportedly prompted by a deadly fight between Uighurs and Han Chinese in southern China last month. The BBC's Chris Hogg in Shanghai says that if the numbers of dead are to be believed - and state media say they may rise - this look like the bloodiest violence in China since Tiananmen Square 20 years ago.

Uighur exiles said police had fired indiscriminately on a peaceful protest in Urumqi.

Thousands of security forces have been deployed in the city of Urumqi in China's Xinjiang region to try to end deadly ethnic clashes.

The BBC's Quentin Sommerville, reporting from Urumqi's Uighur neighbourhood, says there are thousands of paramilitary police in the city in a situation he says is martial law in all but name.

Reporters from the AFP news agency said they had seen fresh violence on Wednesday, including one attack on a Uighur man by about 20 Han Chinese.

The city of Urumqi will adopt a curfew Tuesday night to avoid further chaos amid the unrest, said Wang Lequan, secretary of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), on Tuesday.

The line of troops, armored vehicles and trucks measuring several kilometers and blasting out the propaganda passed for about 25 minutes through Saimachang, the Uighur neighborhood where hundreds of women protested on Tuesday. Helicopters flying only a few meters above rooftops scattered propaganda leaflets over the crowd of hundreds who gathered to watch the security forces march by.

Sunday's rioters were mostly from the southern part of Xinjiang, the English-language China Daily quoted Adina, the wife of a neurosurgeon at the regional People's Hospital, as saying. "They had different accents, wore different clothes, and beat up even Uighur girls who wore short sleeves (for violating fundamentalist customs)," Adina added.

Overnight in a Uighur neighborhood near the main bazaar, residents prepared for trouble, readying themselves with clubs. One middle-aged woman in a headscarf walked by carrying a machete and a carving knife mounted on a stick.

The death toll has risen to 140 following Sunday night's riot in Urumqi, capital of northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, the regional government said Monday.

At least 828 people were injured in the deadly violence that erupted Sunday night.     Rioters burned 261 motor vehicles, including 190 buses, at least 10 taxis and two police cars, said Liu.     As of 9 am, several vehicles were still seen ablaze on Urumqi's streets he said.

Groups of ethnic Han Chinese have marched through the city of Urumqi carrying clubs and machetes, as tension grows between ethnic groups and police.Security forces fired tear gas to disperse the Chinese, who said they were protesting against violence carried out by ethnic Muslim Uighurs.

Officials say 156 people - mostly ethnic Han Chinese - died in Sunday's violence that erupted when Uighur protesters attacked vehicles before turning on local Han Chinese and battling security forces in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang province.

More than 1,000 were injured. Uighur groups say many more have died, claiming 90% of the dead were Uighurs

Police fired tear gas Tuesday to try to restore order as hundreds of Han Chinese armed with clubs marched through the Xinjiang capital of Urumqi, smashing shops and knocking over food stalls run by Muslims.

The city, where rioting and ethnic clashes killed 156 people two days ago, was extremely tense, with security officials breaking up a separate protest by the train station. Also, Muslim women in traditional headscarves faced off with armed Chinese police, wailing for the release of their sons and husbands detained after the riots.

Turkey's prime minister has described ethnic violence in China's Xinjiang region as "a kind of genocide"."There is no other way of commenting on this event," Recep Tayyip Erdogan said.

The death toll from the violence there has now risen from 156 to 184, China's state-run Xinhua news agency reports. More than 1,000 people were injured.

"The event taking place in China is a kind of genocide," Mr Erdogan told reporters in Turkey's capital, Ankara. "There are atrocities there, hundreds of people have been killed and 1,000 hurt. We have difficulty understanding how China's leadership can remain a spectator in the face of these events."

New protests have flared in the western Chinese city of Urumqi, two days after more than 150 people died in clashes involving ethnic groups and police.About 200 ethnic Uighurs, who are a Muslim minority, faced off against police to protest over the arrest of 1,434 people over Sunday's unrest. Groups of ethnic Han Chinese have now armed themselves with batons and stones and have gathered in Urumqi.

Witnesses to Sunday's protests said Uighur protesters attacked vehicles before turning on local Han Chinese.

The unrest was apparently sparked by a brawl between Uighurs and Han Chinese several weeks earlier in a toy factory thousands of miles away in Guandong province.

Rebiya Kadeer, an elfin grandmother with gray-tinged pigtails who was released from a Chinese prison in March 2005 and immediately whisked into exile. A former millionaire once praised by Beijing as a model businesswoman, Kadeer now lives near Washington, D.C. She is recognized as the leader of the Uighur exile community and heads the Uyghur American Association and the World Uyghur Congress; both groups receive grants from the bipartisan National Endowment for Democracy funded by the U.S. Congress

my family has been a target of Chinese government persecution. Whenever something happens, authorities go after my family. My two sons are in prison. Even my grandchildren have been kicked out of school.

You mentioned your two sons in prison. What were they charged with and what are their prison terms?In 2006 one was sentenced to seven years and the other to nine years, on charges of tax evasion and separatism, respectively.