URUMQI, China: Chinese riot police broke up a small demonstration by Uighurs leaving Friday prayers in Urumqi, arresting several who were taken away with hands above their heads. Thousands of people meanwhile poured into bus and train stations to leave Xinjiang’s capital city after deadly ethnic unrest, as most mosques were ordered shut.

A crowd of several hundred gathered near the White Mosque in Urumqi along with riot police with submachine guns as armored police vehicles blocked roads around the building and a helicopter hovered overhead, the first sign of unrest days after deadly rioting in the ethnically divided city.

“You see, this is how they treat Uighurs — like animals,” said one woman of what appeared to be only a localized flare-up.

Hundreds of Uighurs crowded into the mosque after authorities relented on a decision to close the mosque for Friday prayers. Security forces have imposed control over Urumqi, but the noon prayer tested the government’s ability to contain Uighur anger after Han Chinese, China’s predominant ethnic group, attacked Uighur neighborhoods on Tuesday.

Those attacks were in revenge for the deaths of 184 people in Uighur rioting on Sunday, the region’s worst ethnic violence in decades.

Authorities said they had put on extra bus services out of Urumqi, but demand outstripped seats and scalpers said they were charging up to five times the normal price for tickets.

At Urumqi’s Bayi bus station, mainly a hub for travel to other parts of China rather than within Xinjiang, around 10,000 people were trying to leave the city, double the normal number, a top official there named Adili said.

He said the numbers had increased because students were also leaving for the summer holidays, but that others were fleeing because of the unrest. Queues at the bus station had as many as 300 people in them on Friday morning, most of them Han but also some Uighurs.

“It is just too risky to stay here. We are scared of the violence,” said Xu Qiugen, 23, a construction worker from central China who had been living in Urumqi for five years and had bought a bus ticket out with his wife.

Local authorities in Kashgar, a Uighur city in the south of Xinjiang, told foreign reporters to leave on Friday, citing “safety” reasons. In some cases the journalists were escorted to the airport.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said genocide was being committed in Xinjiang and called on Chinese authorities to intervene to prevent more deaths.

“The incidents in China are, simply put, genocide. There’s no point in interpreting this otherwise,” Erdogan said.

“We’re having trouble understanding how the Chinese government would remain a bystander to this,” Erdogan told reporters in comments broadcast live on NTV television.

“We want the Chinese administration, with which our bilateral ties are continuously improving, to show sensitivity,” added Erdogan.