KABUL – Chinese Foreign Ministry has expressed ignorance about the USclaims of killing anti China militants in Afghanistan. No such informationis available with the China, the spokesperson has said.
U.S. forces in Afghanistan have attacked networks of anti-China militantsin an action that is likely to please Beijing, which had called for Westerncooperation in its fight against a group it says wants to split off itsXinjiang region.
The strikes in the northern province of Badakhshan destroyed Talibantraining camps which support militant operations in Afghanistan as well asoperations by the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) in the borderregion with China and Tajikistan, Afghanistan’s NATO-led mission said in arelease on Thursday.
“The U.S. strikes support Afghanistan in reassuring its neighbours that itis not a safe sanctuary for terrorists who want to carry out cross-borderoperations,” it said.
The force gave no more details about the attacks or any estimate ofcasualties but it said the ETIM was behind attacks both inside and outsideChina and two of its members had been involved in a 2002 plot to bomb theU.S. Embassy in Kyrgyzstan.
“They pose a threat to China and enjoy support from the Taliban inBadakhshan and throughout the border region,” the force said.
The group is drawn from members of China’s mostly Muslim Uighur minority,who speak a Turkic language and live in Xinjiang in China’s far west.
In Beijing, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said he did not haveinformation about the issue, but that fighting ETIM was a “corecounter-terrorism concern” for China.
“Striking against terrorism is the responsibility of all countries in theworld,” Geng Shuang told a news briefing on Friday.
In 2016, Beijing was angered at a U.S. State Department report that saidthere was a lack of transparency or information from China about incidentsit called terrorism, and that cooperation on the problem was limited.
The United States has since urged China to play a bigger role in combatingglobal terrorism.
In the past, some Western countries have been reluctant to shareintelligence with China on terrorism issues, citing concern about possiblehuman rights abuses in Xinjiang.
China has long been worried that instability in Afghanistan could spillover into Xinjiang.
Hundreds of people have been killed in violence in recent years inXinjiang. Beijing blames the bloodshed on Islamist militants andseparatists, though rights groups say the unrest is more a reaction torepressive Chinese policies.
The United States, Britain and the United Nations have listed the ETIM as aterrorist group.