China Tuesday released a wanted list of eight "terrorists" it said had carried out attacks aimed at the Beijing Olympics and were bent on separating the restive western region of Xinjiang.

It said the eight were all Chinese nationals and members of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), a group listed by the United Nations as a terrorist organization in 2002 with links to Al Qaeda.

"The eight are all key members of the ETIM, and all participated in the planning, deployment and execution of all kinds of violent terrorist activities targeting the Beijing Olympics," Wu Heping, a spokesman with the Ministry of Public Security, told reporters.

Wu said they had carried attacks on targets in China and overseas, but provided no details.

Resource-rich Xinjiang, strategically located on the borders of Central Asia, has been rocked by sometimes violent unrest this year, including the killing of 16 armed police just before the August Olympics, blamed by China on Muslim militants seeking an independent state they call East Turkestan.

China in April said it had foiled a number of terror plots targeting the Olympics by two separate organizations which had included suicide bomb attacks and kidnapping athletes.

A statement handed out by police named Memetiming Memeti, 37, as the head of the ETIM.

Memeti, also named "Memetiming Aximu" among other aliases, had depatched more than 10 ETIM members to China and "certain Western Asian countries" to collect funds, explosives and carry out terror attacks on targets in China and overseas, the statement said.

The other suspects — Emeti Yakuf, Memetituersun Yiming, Memetituersun Abuduhalike, Xiamisidingaihemaiti Abudumijiti, Aikemilai Wumaierjiang, Yakuf Memeti and Tuersun Toheti — had variously been involved in planning attacks, leading terror cells, training and recruiting.

Wu called for international cooperation to track them down.

"We hope that relevant international governments and law enforcement departments can carry out investigations into these eight terrorist suspects according to the law, and if their whereabouts are discovered, that they be arrested and handed over to China," Wu said.

Many of Xinjiang’s 8 million largely Muslim Uighurs chafe at the strict controls on religion that China enforces and resent influxes of Han Chinese migrant workers and businesses.

Uighurs make up slightly less than half of the region’s people, and most of the rest are Han.

Dilxat Raxit, spokesperson for the World Uyghur Congress, dismissed the list as an excuse for China to crack down on Uighurs demanding greater autonomy for Xinjiang.

"The list has political motives," Raxit told Reuters by telephone. "They have produced no evidence to support these claims."