Two others were jailed for 19 years over a wave of deadly violence in July in the region, where the mainly Muslim Uighur minority has long chafed against Chinese rule, and authorities claim that Pakistan-trained terror cells operate.

The four were handed the death penalty Wednesday after being found guilty a day earlier of masterminding and engaging in terrorist organisations, illegally making explosives, murder and arson, the official Xinhua news agency said, citing the local tianshannet.com website, which is also state-run.

The report said the two who received jail sentences were "accomplices" in the violence. The guilty verdicts were handed down by intermediate courts in remote Kashgar and Hotan, it said.

The rulings related to a July 18 assault on a police station in Hotan which killed four people, and two attacks on July 30 and 31 in Kashgar that left 13 dead, Xinhua said, without specifying how many were sentenced over each attack.

The Hotan clash was described by an official in the region as a terror attack on a police station by a crowd who killed four, including a police officer. But activists called it an outburst of anger by ordinary Uighurs.

AFP