Melbourne, July 26 (ANI): Organisers of next months Beijing Olympics have received a fresh threat from the separatist Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP), which has already claimed responsibility for the May bus bombing in Shanghai.

A group monitoring terror threats on the Internet was quoted by The Herald as saying that TIP Commander Seyfullah has claimed credit for several attacks in China less than a fortnight out from the start of the Olympics.

Seyfullah says in a video clip monitored by the Washington-based Intel Center that more attacks will take place from Yunnan, the base of TIP.

“Our aim is to target the most critical points related to the Olympics. We will try to attack Chinese central cities severely using the tactics that have never been employed,” he continues.

The warnings come just a day after Chinese police claimed they cracked a terrorist cell planning to attack the Shanghai Stadium, the venue where the Australian men’’s soccer team will open its Olympic campaign on August 7.

Australian Olympic Committee spokesman Mike Tancred said it took any terrorist threat “very seriously” but remained confident in the Chinese government’’s security plans for the Games.

Australia is sending a team of more than 430 athletes to the China for the Olympics. A staff of 319 officials, including a medical team of 75, will support them.

Commander Seyfullah claimed credit for the May 5 Shanghai bus bombing which killed three; another Shanghai attack; an attack on police in Wenzhou on July 17 using an explosives laden tractor; a bombing of a Guangzhou plastic factory on July 17; and bombings of three buses in Yunnan province on July 21.

According to global intelligence analysts Stratfor, the Turkestan Islamic Party is another name used by the Islamic Party of East Turkestan (ETIM), an ethnic Uighur and Muslim separatist group seeking to create an independent state out of China’’s westernmost, heavily Muslim Xinjiang province.(ANI)