The exiled leader of China's Uighurs says almost 10,000 people "disappeared" in one night on July 5 when authorities cracked down on the unrest in the mainly Muslim region of Xinjiang.

Rebiya Kadeer, told a Tokyo press conference that "Uighur people who were there must have been either killed or taken away. The next morning, the streets were cleaned and the bodies of ethnic Han Chinese were left in the streets."

 
"Where did those people go? If they died, where did they go?” Kadeer is on a to Japan that has drawn angry protests from Beijing
 
Xinjiang government spokeswoman Hou Hanmin dismissed the claim. She said it was "not even worth a counter reaction", according to Thursday's Global Times, a state owned Chinese newspaper.
 
“If there were more than 10,000 missing, how many more of them would have taken part in the riot?” Hou said.

According to AP, shortly after the riot, “police showed up to disperse a crowd of between 1,000 and 3,000 demonstrators.”

Urumqi police announced on Wednesday that they had arrested a further 253 people suspected of being closely connected to the violence, in addition to the 1,434 suspects the government said were detained earlier.
         
Members of the Uighur ethnic group say the unrest was touched off when Urumqi police responded violently to peaceful protests over an earlier brawl at a factory in southern China that state media said left one Uighur dead.
 
However, the government says the Uighurs, most of whom are Muslim, went on a rampage in Urumqi against members of China's dominant Han ethnic group.

UN investigation
Kadeer said she had asked Japanese lawmakers during a meeting Wednesday to  push for a UN investigation into the riots.
 
"I want to urge the international community to dispatch an independent, third-party investigation mission to investigate what happened," she said.
 
"If China can confidently say that the Uighur people are at fault, then open up the area, tell the third-party commission what really happened."
 
Beijing accuses Kadeer of being a "criminal" and  a separatist who instigated the unrest. The  government says the riots left 197  people dead, most of them Han Chinese killed by angry Uighur mobs.
 
The police in Urumqi city has also issued a list with photos of 15 people wanted in connection with the riots on July 5. All the names on the list appeared to be Uighur, except one. The other was a Han Chinese name.

The Chinese government has accused Kadeer of masterminding the violence. It is not known whether or not her name is also on the list.