The government of Zengcheng, a suburban city of Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong province, has sent working groups to villages, factories and residential communities to clarify the rumor about a clash between security personnel and a pregnant street vendor.
Meanwhile, Ye Niuping, mayor of Zengcheng, urged local residents not to spread concocted rumors.
"The city government has made great efforts to tell local residents the truth about the clash by sending special working groups to visit local factories and households," Ye told a news conference in Guangzhou on Sunday.
The clash took place in Dadun village of Xintang township on Friday night.
Wang Lianmei, a pregnant woman, and her husband Tang Xuecai had a fierce quarrel and later clashed with the village's security personnel, who thought the couple had illegally occupied the village's road to sell goods at about 9:30 pm on Friday.
Wang, 20, and Tang, 28, come from Kaijiang county, Sichuan province.
Wang fell to the ground during the clash, after which several police cars and an ambulance were immediately sent to the site.
After mediation, Wang and Tang agreed to stop selling goods in the street and Wang was taken to a hospital by the ambulance at 10:35 pm. However, more than 100 people gathered at the scene to prevent Wang from being sent to the hospital for examination, Ye told media.
Some of them used bottles, bricks and stones to attack the police officers.
Damage was done to three police cars, the ambulance, many private cars, a bank's ATMs and other public property.
And at 3 am on Saturday, more than 100 people gathered at the scene again to use stones and bricks to attack police officers, who were investigating the case and clearing up the scene, after rumors held that Wang had been seriously injured while her husband had been killed by police.
The case was finally brought under control after police had later detained 25 suspects for further investigation.
At one stage the incident had attracted more than 1,000 onlookers.
(中國日報網(wǎng)英語點津 Helen 編輯)
About the broadcaster:
Lee Hannon is Chief Editor at China Daily with 15-years experience in print and broadcast journalism. Born in England, Lee has traveled extensively around the world as a journalist including four years as a senior editor in Los Angeles. He now lives in Beijing and is happy to move to China and join the China Daily team.