PUBLISHED ONJuly 24, 2015 10:26 AM
SHANGHAI - Chinese police arrested two men with explosives in the city of Wenzhou on Friday, authorities said, describing them as members of a "violent, terrorist, criminal group".
The pair, who were captured by police early in the morning, were found with explosives, knives and other weapons, the city government of Wenzhou said in a brief statement on its verified microblog.
The case was still under investigation, the statement said. It did not identify the men's group, or give their nationality or ethnicity.
China's far western region of Xinjiang, the homeland of the mainly Muslim Uighur minority, sees sporadic violence blamed by authorities on Islamist separatists, which has sometimes spread to the country's Han heartland.
Wenzhou is in eastern China and nearly 3,000 kilometres (1,900 miles) from Xinjiang.
On Monday, state media said police had arrested a Uighur who had returned from a training camp in Syria and was planning a bomb attack on a shopping centre in the northern city of Shijiazhuang.
Dilxat Raxit, a spokesman for exile group the World Uyghur Congress, told AFP he was unable to determine whether the two arrested in Wenzhou were Uighurs.
Earlier this week, an unemployed Chinese man set off an explosion, killing himself and two other people, state media reported, in the latest deadly action by a disgruntled citizen.