KASHGAR, China, June 17 – China locked down the far-western former Silk Road city of Kashgar on Tuesday in preparation for the passage of the Olympic torch relay through the sensitive region populated by ethnic-minority Muslim Uighurs.

Shops lining Wednesday’s torch route were shuttered and police stood guard on every street corner. Soldiers and firefighters patrolled the main square of a city seen as the heart of Islam in China’s oil-rich border region of Xinjiang.