(source al-jazeera) Tensions high in riot-hit Urumqi Ethnic unrest is escalating in China’s western Xinjiang region, where police have clashed with a large group of armed ethnic Han Chinese trying to reach a Uighur neighbourhood in the city of Urumqi. The clashes come two days after deadly rioting in the city left at least 156 people dead and hundreds injured in the worst outbreak of ethnic violence seen in China in years. With tensions high, groups of Uighurs and Han Chinese took to the streets in at least four neighbourhoods of the Xinjiang capital on Tuesday. Police used tear gas in an effort to disperse the crowds and keep the rival groups apart. Al Jazeera’s correspondent Melissa Chan, reporting from Urumqi, said one group of Han Chinese, some armed with sticks, shovels and knives, were trying to break through police lines to reach a Uighur area of the city. Describing a volatile situation in the city, she said some groups of Han Chinese were searching cars looking for anyone they thought to be Uighur. Some of the Han protesters were singing China’s national anthem and pledging to defend their country. Other reports have quoted Han Chinese vowing to take revenge on Uighurs they blamed for Sunday’s unrest. “They attacked us. Now it’s our turn to attack them,” one man in the crowd told Reuters. Uighur groups say China’s repressive policies combined with years of mass migration to Xinjiang by Han Chinese, China’s largest ethnic group, have stoked ethnic tensions in Xinjiang, sowing the seeds for Sunday’s violence. Women protest Earlier hundreds of ethnic Uighurs, many of them women, clashed with police as they protested against the arrest of relatives in the crackdown that followed Sunday’s unrest. Many waved the identity cards of husbands, brothers or sons they said had been arbitrarily detained. “My husband was taken away yesterday by police. They didn’t say why. They just took him away,” one woman who identified herself as Maliya told Reuters. Several objects were thrown and fighting broke out when Uighur protesters advanced towards lines of anti-riot police carrying clubs and shields. The latest clashes came as a group of foreign reporters, including Al Jazeera’s correspondent, were being taken on a tour of the city to see the aftermath of Sunday’s riots. Chinese police are reported to have arrested more than 1,400 people in a crackdown that Wang Lequan, the head of the Chinese Communist party in Xinjiang, said was intended to quell the unrest, although he warned “this struggle is far from over”. Wang called for officials to launch “a struggle against separatism”.