BEIJING: Thousands of protesters accusing a brewery in southwest China of polluting water supplies clashed with armed police, a human rights group said on Sunday, the latest violence sparked by environmental worries.

Several thousand residents in Sichuan province took to the streets to protest contamination of drinking and irrigation water by China Resources Breweries, said the Hong Kong-based Information Centre for Human Rights and Democracy.

The angry citizens near Shifang city surrounded the factory on July 26, stopping production and holding up cargo, it said.

More than 500 armed police were dispatched in what the report said turned into a "violent and bloody" confrontation. 20 people were injured and seven arrested, the report added.

Police in Shifang city and Yuanshi township, where the factory is based, contacted by AFP on Sunday refused to comment. Nobody answered the phone at the brewery, which is listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange.

China's degraded environment has caused a rising number of riots and other forms of public unrest.

The leadership in Beijing has put cleaning up its filthy environment at the top of its agenda, but frustrated citizens are increasingly taking matters into their own hands, as they did in June in southeastern China.

Work on a billion-dollar petrochemical plant in Xiamen, a major port, was suspended after a text message campaign by protesters angry about industrial pollution.

China's waterways have suffered severely during the nation's breakneck economic growth over the past two decades.

More than 70 percent of China's waterways and 90 percent of its underground water are contaminated by pollution, according to government figures.


- AFP/so