URUMQI: The recent syringe attacks in Urumqi are being called "terror attacks" by regional officials.

"They aimed to unsettle the city's atmosphere," said Yan Yuxing, former president of Urumqi Municipal Intermediate People's Court.

The attacks, which targeted innocent people in the capital of northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, were not practical jokes or simple crimes perpetrated by one individual but organized and planned stabbings that disturbed the social order and created an atmosphere of fear, said Du Xintao, an official with the regional Public Security Department.