Chinese officials on Thursday put the death toll in last week’s attack on a Xinjiang police station at 18, including 14 Uyghur Muslim “rioters” who were shot dead by police.

Officials said 14 Uyghurs were killed by Chinese security forces when they allegedly attacked a police station in China’s Xinjiang province, shouting “jihadi” slogans.

Disclosing the details of the attack on the police station in Hotan city for the first time, reports in the official media here said all the 14 “rioters” killed were Uyghurs, a Muslim community of Turkic origin.

Four others, including two police officials were also killed in the attack.

However, the Germany-based exile group the World Uyghur Congress, contradicted the official Chinese version and said police had opened fire at the Uyghur protesters who had assembled outside the police station to seek the release of detainees.

The group put the number of Uyghurs killed at 20.

Tension has brewed in Xinjiang province, which borders Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK) ever since massive riots between indigenous Uyghurs and Han Chinese settlers led to the killing of nearly 200 people.

Giving details on the July 18 attack, Ablet Metniyaz, chief of the police station, said “all rioters were males and aged between 20 and 40. Most of them did not speak the Hotan dialect”.

“I shouted in Uyghur, asking the rioters to stop… and to settle their dispute peacefully. But they kept throwing home-made Molotov cocktails and rocks at us,” Metniyaz was quoted by the state run Global Times as saying.