Chinese state media on Saturday showed rare pictures of its armed forces on what it said was a mission to root out militants in the far western region of Xinjiang.

China's government has repeatedly blamed attacks in the far western region of Xinjiang, home to the mostly Muslim Uighur people, and other parts of the country on Islamist militants.

A series of nine pictures showed armed police dressed in black, with helmets and balaclavas, clambering over mountains, getting ready to storm what looked like a house in a rural region, and a group posing for a picture with their faces blanked out.

"France's Paris was hit by its worst terrorist attack in history, with hundreds dead and injured. On the other side of the world, the police in China's Xinjiang, after 56 days of pursuing and attacking, carried out a full attack on the terrorists and got great results," read the text accompanying the pictures.

Gunmen and bombers attacked restaurants, a concert hall and a sports stadium at locations across Paris on Friday, killing at least 120 people in a deadly rampage.

The post appeared to originate on an official microblog run by the Ministry of Public Security, but was then removed, though remained widely available on other state-run media microblogs.

A letter shown as part of the pictures says that after a 56-day battle, "it finally ended at 4:40 pm today (Saturday)".

Parts of the letter were pixellated out and warned that those who perpetrated violence would be severely dealt with.

It was not clear when or exactly where the pictures were taken. China hardly ever shows pictures of its forces engaging in anti-terror operations.

Dilxat Raxit, spokesman for the main Xinjiang exiled group the World Uyghur Congress, said in a statement that China was using the shootings in Paris to whip up anti-Uighur feeling in the country.

"Opening fire on and killing Uighurs who are resisting China's systematically repressive policies and then calling them terrorists is a special political necessity for China," he said.

Hundreds have died in violence in Xinjiang. The government blames the unrest on Islamist militants and separatists who want to establish an independent state called East Turkestan for Uighurs, who speak a Turkic language.

Rights groups and many foreign experts, though, doubt that there exists the cohesive militant Islamist group in Xinjiang that the government claims, and say the violence stems from popular anger at Chinese controls on religion and culture.