Beijing (AsiaNews/ Agencies) - Six farmers were killed and as many as 100 others were seriously injured by armed men in one of China's deadliest incidents of rural unrest in years. The incident occurred in the early hours of Saturday morning when six busloads of men attacked Shengyou Village in Hebei Province with hunting rifles, clubs, sharpened pipes and other weapons.

The attackers, wearing construction helmets, were mostly young men in their 20s allegedly hired by a local electricity company. The farmers, who had pitched tents and dug foxholes and trenches on the disputed land to prevent the authorities from seizing it, said they suspected the assailants were also hired by corrupt local officials. They said scores of villagers were beaten or stabbed and several were shot in the back while fleeing. Residents recalled the men arrived in six white buses before dawn, most of them wearing hard hats and combat fatigues, and they struck without warning, repeatedly shouting "Kill!" and "Attack!" Police failed to respond to calls for help until nearly six hours later, residents said, long after the assailants had departed.

Officials in Dingzhou Prefecture, which has jurisdiction over Shengyou Village have set up a special group to investigate the incident.

Reached by telephone, a spokesman for the provincial government said he could not confirm or discuss the incident. "So far, we've been ordered not to issue any information about it," he said.

Large contingents of police have been posted around Shengyou, about 100 miles southwest of Beijing, but bruised and bandaged residents smuggled a reporter into the village Monday and led him to a vast field littered with abandoned weapons, spent shell casings and bloody rags. They also provided footage of the fight made with a digital video camera (to see the video http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/default.stm#)

The village has refused to accept land compensation from the Hebei Guohua Power Company since 2003, which hopes to build a power plant on 26 hectares of village land. The plant agreed to pay them about USD 1,800 per acre, but residents said the offer did not meet national guidelines. They also accused local officials of stealing some of the money and demanded a full accounting.

The clash was not the first in the village. On April 20 some 20 youths attacked residents in the middle of the night, telling them to move off the land. One of the youths, identified as Zhu Xiaorui, 23, was reportedly captured by the villagers at that time and has been in their custody ever since. During Saturday's attack, some of the assailants appeared to be searching for the man, witnesses said. Farmers later moved him to a shed in the party headquarters and allowed a reporter to speak to him.

Zhu Xiaorui appeared frightened but healthy, although his ankles were shackled. He said he had been recruited by a man he met at the Beijing nightclub where he worked. He said he was taken to the village, given a metal pipe and told to "teach a lesson" to the farmers, and was promised 100 yuan (USD 12) for the job. "The villagers have treated me kindly," Zhu said, tears in his eyes. He added that he did not want to be turned over to Dingzhou police because he was afraid they would kill him for confessing to the farmers.

Despite the attack, the farmers remained defiant and in control of the disputed land. They also occupied the local headquarters of the ruling Communist Party, where they placed the bodies of six of their slain compatriots, with candles and incense burning in front of their coffins. A crowd of emotional mourners filled the courtyard outside; hanging over the front gate was a white flag with a word scrawled in black ink: "Injustice."

Relatives identified the victims as Niu Zhanbao, 46, a pig farmer who suffered a fatal gunshot wound to his back; Hou Tongshun, 56, a father of three who was struck in the chest by a hook; Niu Shunlin, 26, a migrant worker who was both shot and stabbed; Niu Chengshe, 49, who suffered a fatal blow to the head; and Zhao Yingzhi, 50, who suffered multiple wounds.

Niu Tongyin, 62, one of the leaders of the farmers' movement, bled to death from a stab wound. His body lay in the Party Members' Activity Room, under portraits of Mao, Stalin, Lenin, Marx and Engels.

Residents said party officials abandoned the building and fled town, apparently because they feared they would be blamed for the killings.

The seizure of farmland by local officials to build roads, dams, factories and other projects, often for personal profit, has emerged as an increasingly volatile issue in the Chinese countryside, where the government owns all land and gives farmers only long-term leases. Peasants often complain they are unfairly compensated when officials confiscate their plots, and have staged hundreds of protests over the issue in recent years.