CHINESE police detained some 300 people and urged others to give themselves up after the death of a teenage girl sparked rioting by 10000 people, a human rights group said yesterday .

The rioters believed that authorities in Weng’an county, in the south- western province of Guizhou, had covered up the rape and murder of the 15-year-old girl because the chief suspect was the son of a top county official, the Hong Kong-based Information Centre for Human Rights and Democracy said.

The number of arrests had risen to 300 and some 2000 police were patrolling the county town following the rioting, which began on Saturday, the centre said in a statement.

The county television station broadcast a government demand for other rioters to surrender, while the injured uncle of the dead girl disappeared from a local hospital yesterday without discharging himself, it said.

A Weng’an county government official confirmed by telephone that rioters were asked to surrender but also called the Information Centre’s count of one dead, 150 injured and hundreds arrested “impossible”.

The official said police who confronted the rioters did not carry any guns and that several officers were injured.

“Now the government has made an announcement to ask people who took part in the riot to confess their crime before July 3, otherwise they will be punished harshly if found out by the government later,” she told Deutsche Presse-Agentur.

She said the girl’s death was a “total accident”. The girl had told her friend’s boyfriend that she wanted to kill herself and then jumped into a river, the official said.

The riot is the latest of an increasing number of protests and violent incidents in recent years, reflecting a simmering unrest over abuse of official powers and widespread cynicism towards the ruling Communist Party in many poor areas. — Sapa-DPA