Knife-wielding mobs of protesters, apparently ethnic Uighurs, attacked Chinese police in a predominantly Muslim region of Xinjiang province Wednesday, triggering protests that left at least 27 people dead.

Fatalities included nine policemen, 10 protesters and at least eight civilians, the Long War Journal (LWJ) reported. The Uighurs, who are predominantly Muslim, blame repression by the communist Beijing government for triggering the violence.

Some Uighurs have endorsed and participated in regional terrorist and insurgent groups including the al-Qaeda linked Eastern Turkistan Islamic Party, according to the LWJ.

Police fired at “mobs” who attacked a local government, building, a construction site, and police stations, the official Chinese news agency Xinhua reported. Xinhua claimed that rioters had been stabbing people and setting police cars on fire.

Some of the heaviest fighting occurred in Shanshan county, approximately 160 miles east of the regional capital of Urumqi.

Similar violence has erupted in recent years in Xinjiang province. The worst outbreak took place in 2009, when almost 200 people, mostly Han, were killed in riots across Urumqi.

In April, The Christian Science Monitor reported on clashes between knife-wielding “suspected terrorists” and local authorities that left 21 people dead near Xinjiang’s frontiers with Afghanistan and Pakistan. According to the paper, “violence flares sporadically” in the region between the native population and job-seeking immigrants from China’s Han majority.

Following the 2009 violence, Beijing installed more than 40,000 high-definition security cameras in Xinjiang. The regime has repeatedly shut down Internet, international phone services and wireless phone service there in recent years.