Tension within Buddhist Tibetan communities is not the only source of ethnic unrest in China -- as recent riots in a county not far from Beijing appear to highlight.

The youngsters had been celebrating Lunar New Year in northern Mengcun Hui autonomous county in February, setting off fireworks, when for some reason they started shooting them at each other.

"The next day the adults, including village officials, began fighting as some of the children had been badly hurt. Each side was laying blame on the other side," Yang Zhi, a Hui Muslim, told AFP.

Armed with almost anything they could lay their hands on, Muslims and non-Muslims from rival villages clashed in medieval fashion, sending at least one young Hui to hospital with severe cuts to the head, back and legs.

This was not a riot in some far-off region of China, but in Niujinzhuang, a rural community just 225 kilometres (140 miles) from Beijing.

The confrontation, which sucked in 1,000 people, was largely between Muslim Chinese known as Huis and nearby villagers made up of Han Chinese, the majority in the country, locals said.

Pockets of Hui communities exist throughout China, but in Mengcun Hui up to a quarter of the county's population of 200,000 are Huis.

To quell the fighting, the Hebei provincial government dispatched 2,000 paramilitary police to seal off the two villages and maintain calm, local residents said.

Officials say the clashes had nothing to do with ethnic or religious tension.

"This is an issue related to public order," an official at the Mengcun county government office who declined to be named told AFP.

Mengcun county police also insisted that the incident was an "ordinary disturbance" among citizens.

But local Huis had a different view.

"The county officials don't want to consider this an ethnic or religious issue," a Hui villager who identified himself by his Muslim name Musa told AFP. "That would mean the issue must be reported to higher authorities."

"We are afraid that the Han are going to decide how to settle this, which means they will decide in favour of the Han," he added.

One of China's largest minorities, Huis were severely persecuted during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) when several million were believed to have been killed, as well as during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976).

Another local Hui, who asked not to be named, said he feared authorities would move to forcibly silence any calls for justice over the recent violence.

"The government is dealing very severely with the Tibetans and the Uighurs," he said, referring to an ongoing clampdown in Tibet and a Turkic-speaking Muslim ethnic group in northwest China's Xinjiang region.

"The Huis suffered greatly in the Qing Dynasty and again during the Cultural Revolution. We don't want to suffer anymore."

Ran Guangrong, a social scientist with Sichuan University, said ethnic disputes like the one in Niujinzhuang were becoming increasingly common -- an alarm bell for a government ever fearful of unrest.

"The number of such incidents has risen since last year," said Ran, adding the government's response was usually "conciliation, asking the two sides to sit down and find a solution".

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