Eight people have been sentenced to death on Monday after a Xinjiang court convicted them of carrying out two attacks that left 46 people dead in Xinjiang, China's state media reported.

The Urumqi Intermediate People's Court also handed out suspended death sentences to five others, China Central Television said.

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Most of the attacks have targetted police stations, military checkpoints and government buildings, but attackers have also hit civilians in several recent incidents, slashing at crowds with knives or setting off bombs at train stations and commercial areas.

Violence in Xinjiang has killed about 400 people in and outside the region over the past 20 months.

Beijing has blamed the attacks on radical separatists with foreign ties, although critics and human rights advocates blame the repressive rule of the Han Chinese-dominated government on Uighurs.

Uighurs also complain of economic disenfranchisement with the inflow of Han Chinese to their homeland.

On April 30, as Chinese President Xi Jinping was wrapping up a tour to the ethnic region, an explosion shook a train station in the regional capital, killing three people, including two attackers.

CCTV said two men were sentenced to death in the train attack.

The defendants said on national television that they were instructed by a man outside China to carry out the attack.

In addition, CCTV said the man was connected to the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, a group that China has designated a terrorist organization.

About three weeks later, on May 22, four men drove two vehicles through a crowded market in central Urumqi and tossed explosives out of the car windows, killing themselves and 39 others.

Authorities responded to the attacks by launching a one-year crackdown on violence in Xinjiang, where security was already tight following riots in Urumqi in 2009 that left nearly 200 people dead, according to official count.