Police clash with Chinese Muslims

Chinese Muslims have fought with officers who demolished a mosque in China’s northwest, a police source said.

The source at the police station in Hexi, a town in the Ningxia region, said the crowd tried to stop the demolition on Friday night. She said about 80 people were detained and the mosque was demolished.

A Hong Kong monitoring group, the Information Centre for Human Rights and Democracy, said authorities demolished the mosque because it was declared an illegal religious place.

The Information Centre cited a villager as saying two people died in the violence, but said it could not confirm that.

The police employee, who refused to give her name, said there were no deaths.