BEIJING (AP) — An assailant hacked four people to death and injured eight others before being detained by police in an attack in China’s restive Central Asian frontier, local residents and officials said Friday.

Few details were available on Thursday’s attack in the oil industry hub of Korla in the western Xinjiang region, and the motive was not immediately clear. Some local residents described it as part of a gambling dispute, while online accounts characterized it as an attack by an ethnic Muslim Uighur against members of the country’s Han Chinese majority.

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