A court in western China has given long prison sentences to three people found guilty of carrying out attacks with syringes. The three received prison terms ranging between seven and 15 years.

One man had jabbed a woman in her buttocks, while a couple had used a syringe to threaten a taxi driver and steal his money. The three convicts are Uighurs, a Muslim Turkic people who claim Xinjiang as their homeland. Since last week hundreds of people, most of them Han Chinese, claim they have been attacked. Last week tens of thousands of Han Chinese took to the streets demanding that the authorities improve security.