BEIJING, March 27: A 19-year-old woman has confessed her part in a failed “terrorist” attack on a Chinese domestic flight earlier this month, Xinhua news agency reported on Thursday, citing Chinas Public Security ministry.

Chinese officials earlier this month said internationally backed separatists seeking an independent Xinjiang, the largely Muslim region in the country’s northwest, were behind the failed March 7 attack.

The plane cut short its journey from Xinjiang to Beijing and landed in the northwestern city of Lanzhou.

Guzalinur Turdi, an ethnic Uighur, had boarded the plane with a “hidden explosive device” that she smuggled past airport security personnel, Xinhua quoted a statement from the ministry as saying.

“She went ahead with her plan for sabotage but was thwarted. She fully confessed,” it said.

A senior Chinese official said recently that extremist Uighurs -- a Turkic people who linguistic and cultural bonds with central Asia -- were plotting attacks on the Beijing Olympics.

A source with knowledge of the investigation earlier told Reuters a woman tried to light flammable liquid smuggled in a canned drink in the plane’s toilet, but aroused the suspicion of crew and other passengers.

The statement provided no further details of the investigation but reiterated that the incident was an “organised and premeditated terrorist attack targeting the aircraft”. Xinjiang is home to 8 million Muslim Uighurs.

Exiled Uighurs campaigning for an independent country have said China concocted the plane incident to justify heavy controls on Uighurs.

China has provided few details of its probe, but Xinhua quoted the region’s Communist Party chief Wang Lequan as saying that another man on board the flight was detained with Turdi.

—Reuters