China has executed three men found guilty of mass stabbing at a train station in the city of Kunming last year that killed 31 people and injured 141 others.

The three men who were executed, Iskandar Ehet, Turgun Tohtunyaz, and Hasayn Muhammad, were sentenced to death in September after having been found guilty of committing homicide and heading a terrorist organization.

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The Kunming Intermediate People's Court meted out the death sentence to the three assailants, which was upheld by a higher court.

It will be recalled that four of the eight knife-wielding separatists were shot dead by the police at the scene while five others were arrested during the March 1, 2014 Kunming attacks.

Reports from the state-owned media entity, Xinhua, said that a female attacker, Patigul Tohti, was spared the death sentence and was meted out life imprisonment instead, after authorities found her pregnant at the time of the arrest.

Lawyers for the Uighurs said their clients were denied a fair trial and that China's use of the death penalty for political reasons does not solve the problem of the warring groups.

Many Chinese were shocked at the enormity of the attacks especially after it happened at a place far from the western region of Xinjiang where violence between warring ethnic groups, the Uighurs and ethnic Han, has been on the rise.

The Uighurs consider Xinjiang, a mostly Sunni Muslim group, as part of their homeland.

Reports said the Chinese did not expect any violence in the train station in the southwest part of China where few people had worried about the possibility of domestic terrorism.

Xinjiang, home to the Muslim Uighur minority group, has become the center of violence in recent years.

Reports said the Chinese liken the March 1, 2014 knife attacks to the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States.

U.S. President Barack Obama condemned the killings as an act of  terrorism and called on China to step up its efforts in arresting and punishing terrorists.

TagsUighurs, han, Xinjiang, execution, terror attack, Kunming train station