China's state broadcaster released security footage Tuesday showing a brutal, premeditated knife attack in a card room in Xinjiang.
Four were injured in the attack which took place on Sunday evening.
Remarkably, armed police took just one minute to arrive at the scene where they overpowered the attackers. Two died at the scene and a third was arrested.
Such incidents have become almost commonplace in recent months with China blaming them on ethnic Uighurs intent on establishing an independent state in the region called East Turkestan.
The worst attack took place in March when a group hacked at passer-by at a train station in the Yunnan city of Kunming, killing 29 and injuring over 130 others.
The violence has not been limited to knife-attacks - last month a suicide bomber killed 39 people in the Xinjiang capital of Urumqi.
On Monday three people were sentenced to death after a car was driven into a crowd next to Tiananmen Square last October.