KASHI, Xinjiang, Aug. 7 (Xinhua) -- Thousands of residents in the northwestern Chinese town of Kashi on Thursday paid their last respects to 16 police killed in a terrorist attack three days ago.

    "The people of all ethnic groups in Kashi will remember you forever," said a banner held up by the crowd lining the streets in the border city of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

    "I feel very sad. They shouldered a heavy responsibility for ensuring border security and our happiness", said local Muhanmetemin Azizi, a white flower pinned on his shirt.

    "I came to pay my last respects to them," the Uygur man in his 40s said solemnly.

    Local authorities held a hour-long ceremony to remember the dead border police on Thursday morning. They were bestowed with titles of "revolutionary martyrs."

    "We will spare no efforts to fight violent crimes and terrorists," said Shi Dagang, secretary of the Kashi Prefectural Committee of the Communist Party of China, at the ceremony.

    Shi told reporters on Tuesday that terrorism was behind Monday's attack, which also left 16 other officers injured.

    Two suspects caught at the scene had confessed their crime. Both locals of Kashi, they were identified as Abdurahman Azat, a 33-year-old vegetable peddler, and Kurbanjan Hemit, a 28-year-old taxi driver, Shi said.

    The two suspects said they had closely observed the time and route the Kashi border police used for morning runs for more than a month before the attack.

    Police also found nine homemade explosive devices at the scene -- two were detonated during the attack -- along with other weapons.

    The weapons were similar to those found by Xinjiang police at a training base of the "Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement" (ETIM) in a crackdown on Dec. 25 last year, according to the police.

    The two suspects had written in documents prepared beforehand that the attack was more important than their lives or those of their mothers, so they had to wage "holy war."

    The United States, China and other countries have designated ETIM a terrorist group. They are an ethnic Uygur and Muslim separatist group seeking to create an independent state in Xinjiang.