As the Olympics approach, Uighur separatists in Xinjiang province have ramped up their activities. Yesterday, they drove a truck into a group of exercising police officers, then hit them with grenades and finally waded in with knives, eventually killing sixteen and wounding another sixteen. The two attackers have been captured.
Notably, the Chinese press did report this as a separatist attack, while still officially denying that the two prior bus explosions were terrorist acts. Perhaps it's harder to pretend that a grenade and knife attack was an accidental fuel explosion.
It appears, at least looking from the outside and as filtered through largely PRC-controlled reporting, that the Chinese government was not adequately prepared for just how much separatist groups would pile on the violence as the Olympics approach and more non-PRC media outlets fill into the country.