BEIJING; China sentenced three more people to death today for murders committed during riots in the far western Xinjiang region in July, bringing to nine the number of people

facing execution for the unrest.

Nearly 200 people were killed when Muslim Uighurs and members of China’s dominant Han ethnicity turned on one another in the streets of the regional capital, Urumqi. First, Uighurs assaulted random people in the overwhelmingly Han city. Days later, Han vigilantes retaliated in Uighur neighbourhoods. It was the country’s worst communal violence in decades.