URUMQI: The five people shot dead by police on Tuesday in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region were part of a "holy war training group", the local public security bureau claimed yesterday.

A team of 15 Xinjiang police officers raided an apartment on Tuanjie Road in the regional capital Urumqi on Tuesday afternoon, in search of three men believed to have stabbed a Han woman while she was at work in a local beauty salon on May 23, a spokesman for the bureau said.

The whereabouts of the gang was determined after the identities of the attackers were identified from security videotape and with help from the victim.