while a resident quoted in the South China Morning Post said it was black with a crescent. Nuerbage police station chief Abulaiti Maitiniyazi (Ablet Metniyaz) was a witness to the attack. He recalled shouting to the men in Uyghur for a peaceful settlement, but receiving molotov cocktails and rocks in return. A Han People's Armed Police paramilitary officer was killed by a molotov cocktail when his squad was forcibly entering the ground level. According to Maitiniyazi, it was when the attackers hacked at the civilian hostages' faces, noses and ears with knives with intent to kill that police fatally shot 14 of the assailants and captured the other four for questioning, ending the attack within 90 minutes of the initial break-in. Six of the eight hostages were rescued alive, while two Han women hostages were hacked to death during the operation, and four Uyghurs were hospitalized for non-life-threatening injuries. Reaction The Xinjiang regional government called the incident an organized, "long-planned" "terrorist attack", and a team from China's national counter-terrorism office was sent to Hotan to investigate the causes of the violence. Media called it "one of the most serious eruptions of violence" since the July 2009 Ürümqi riots. An expert at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations said that the attack aimed to create fear in the public. On July 19, a spokesperson for China's Ministry of Public Security announced that two of the 18 attackers had links to ETIM. Citing the deaths of Uyghur civilians in the attack, a government spokesperson said that the attack was apparently not ethnically motivated. But the environment in the city after the attack bore signs of ethnic tension. Many Han residents of the city feared for their lives, recalling a spate recent violent crimes against Han people by Uyghurs in Hotan. Many businesses owned by Han shut down, and both local and visiting Han are said to have "almost disappeared in the Uygur-dominated areas". On August 13, the elite counterterrorist Snow Leopard Commando Unit was deployed to Hotan and Kashgar to secure the cities ahead of the China-Eurasia Expo in September. The anti-China pro-Uyghur independence World Uyghur Congress (WUC) in Germany claimed that the attack was preceded by the violent suppression of a peaceful protest two hours earlier. However, the Financial Times interviewed local Han and Uyghur residents, and none of them had any knowledge of a demonstration before the attack. A