A "strike hard" campaign against what China calls terrorism in the largely Muslim region of Xinjiang and beyond has seen 181 gangs busted, authorities said Monday, a year after the controversial measures were launched.

Rights groups have labelled the crackdown discriminatory, raising further concerns after Beijing announced in January the measures would be extended until at least the end of 2015.

Something hideously violent happened in Elishku. Whether it was a separatist attack or a civilian massacre is shrouded in the mists of conflict, control, claim and counter-claim that plague China's mainly Muslim region of Xinjiang.

According to authorities, 96 civilians and "terrorists" died when militants attacked a police station in the township last July 28. Residents, speaking to foreign media for the first time, say that hundreds of people mounted a protest against government restrictions on religion which was brutally put down.

A Chinese court on Tuesday sentenced a prominent scholar from China's mostly-Muslim Uighur minority to life in prison for "separatism," his lawyer said, in a case which critics say could add to tensions in the restive Xinjiang region.

Ilham Tohti, a former university professor and outspoken critic of Beijing's policies in the vast western region, "will certainly appeal", the sentence handed down by a court in Xinjiang's capital Urumqi, Li Fangping, one of his lawyers, told Agence France Presse.

Seventeen coal miners have died after being trapped by a weekend gas explosion in northwestern China, an official news agency reported Monday.

The miners were trapped Saturday by the explosion at a mine 120 kilometres from Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang region, the Xinhua News Agency said. It said Monday they had died and the cause of the incident was under investigation.

China has detained 29 people described as "terrorist suspects" in its ethnically divided western region of Xinjiang, state media said Thursday, as authorities crack down following several deadly attacks.

Suspects detained in Xinjiang's capital Urumqi face charges including "inciting separatism" and "disturbing order in a public place", the state-run Xinjiang Net said.

The United States on Thursday condemned the "horrific terrorist attack" that killed at least 31 in China's Xinjiang, voicing strong opposition to violence targeting civilians.

The swift condemnation comes after Chinese social media users criticized the United States for not immediately using the term "terrorism" to describe earlier attacks blamed by authorities on members of the Uighur minority.

Courts in China's ethnically-divided Xinjiang region, home to mainly Muslim Uighurs, have jailed 39 people for offences including spreading "terrorist videos", state media said Wednesday as Beijing tightens security after several deadly attacks.

The 39 were given prison sentences of up to 15 years, the state run China News Service (CNS) said, adding that several had "organised, led and participated" in terrorist organisations.

Six Uighur women were among 16 people killed in a clash in China's restive Xinjiang region last week, campaign groups said, contradicting Beijing's version of events.

The Munich-based World Uyghur Congress and Radio Free Asia, which is funded by the U.S. government, said that police raided a house where an extended family was gathering.

China's Communist Party has expelled the military commander of Xinjiang from its ranks, state media reported Sunday, after an attack in Beijing officially blamed on members of the Uighur minority in the troubled northwest region.

General Peng Yong, who was named commander of the Xinjiang military region in July 2011, was dismissed from his post as a member of the Standing Committee of the Chinese Communist Party of Xinjiang, the Xinjiang Daily said in a terse dispatch.

Security was ramped up in the capital of China's Xinjiang region, state media reported Friday, the fourth anniversary of ethnic clashes which killed around 200 people.

Two incidents last week in the area, where mostly Muslim Uighurs are the largest group but members of China's Han majority dominate the economy, left at least 35 people dead.