BEIJING - Chinese police shot dead three "violent terror" suspects in the western Xinjiang region, the government said on Monday. The govt says separatists in Xinjiang, home to the Muslim Uighur minority, aim to form their own state called East Turkestan, and have links with militants abroad, including in Asia and the Middle East. Security officers in the southern Xinjiang city of Hotan, a one-time Silk Road outpost considered part of the Uighur heartland, encountered violent resistance late on Sunday while pursing three members of a "violent terror gang", the Xinjiang govt said on the Tianshan Net official news site.