The Chinese government says Islamic extremists, backed by Osama bin Laden, have assassinated local officials and religious leaders, poisoned livestock and blown up buses over the past decade in an effort to wrest control of Xinjiang (SHIN-jahng), a remote northwestern region, from China and establish a state of their own called East Turkistan. Here in Aksu, a city of more than 2 million, the local police chief was gunned down in August in a firefight with Muslim separatists running a bomb-making lab, Chinese officials say. Full Story