Senior PLA official leaves for SCO drills in Kazakhstan

BEIJING - Ma Xiaotian, Deputy Chief of General Staff of Chinese People"s Liberation Army (PLA), left Beijing Monday for southern Kazakhstan, to lead Chinese troops" participation in anti-terror drills that start Wednesday, the Ministry of National Defense said in a statement.

Ma will serve as the chief commander of the 1,000 PLA troops - which includes a ground force combat group, an air force combat group and a logistics group - partaking in the drills, which is the seventh exercise of its kind under the framework of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).

Ma, a PLA air force general and about 70 other people, including members of the Command and campaign headquarters of China"s drill troops, left for Kazakhstan aboard a same plane, the statement said.

The first PLA contingent to leave for the drills departed last Tuesday on a train from Zhurihe, north China"s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, where a PLA military training base is located. The train will travel nearly 5,000 km before arriving Tuesday.

About 5,000 troops from China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan will participate in the drills named "Peace Mission 2010" that will run from September 9 to 25.