Xinjiang's top leaders revealed yesterday that an attempt on Friday to crash a passenger jet bound for Beijing had been foiled.

The China Southern Airlines flight took off at 10:35 am from Urumqi, capital of the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, and was forced to make an emergency landing at Lanzhou, capital of neighboring Gansu province, at 12:40 pm, because "some people were attempting to create an air disaster," said Nur Bekri, chairman of the Xinjiang regional government.

The attackers were stopped in time by the air police, and all the passengers and crew members on board are safe, he told reporters after a panel discussion of the Xinjiang delegation to the ongoing annual session of the National People's Congress (NPC), the top legislature.