Beijing  - Paramilitary police kept a lower profile on the streets of China's far western city of Urumqi Saturday as the government raised the death toll to 184 after several days of ethnic violence.

The riot police were patrolling in smaller groups and less frequently than earlier this week, a foreign journalist said by telephone from Urumqi.

"They are not so visible, nothing like two days ago," the journalist said.

"Most of them are sitting down," he said. "The groups that move around are smaller then before."

Most police convoys were made up of about four trucks, compared with convoys of up to 80 trucks in previous days, he said.

The city's main Muslim area was "very quiet" with businesses closed as usual on a Saturday.

The official Xinhua news agency continued to plug the government's message that the city was gradually "returning to normal."

It said authorities resumed the last of the city's 43 bus routes Friday with security guards posted on every vehicle after serious damage to about 190 buses during the rioting, which began Sunday.

"Special personnel were dispatched to patrol key bus lines, gas stations and car parks," the agency quoted an official source as saying.

The new death toll, which was not immediately reported in Chinese-language media, included 137 members of China's Han majority, 111 of whom were men.

Forty-six members of the city's Uighur minority and one person from the Hui Musilm ethnic group also died in the violence, the agency quoted the regional government in Xinjiang, of which Urumqi is the capital, as saying.

The previous casualty toll, announced early Tuesday, stood at 156 dead and more than 1,000 injured.

Uighur exile groups said, however, that up to 800 people have died in the violence, many of them Uighurs shot or beaten to death by police during rioting Sunday and Monday.

Several major mosques were closed in Urumqi Friday, forcing Muslims to hold prayers at home, as the government used police, troops and public appeals in a bid to prevent more conflict between Uighur and Han Chinese residents. (dpa)