"From about 7 p.m. the police started firing tear gas into the crowd, but this failed to scare people," said a resident who gave his name only as Li and claimed to have been at the scene, where, he said, a relative had been killed. "Later, we heard more than 10 explosions, and thought they were just detonators, so nobody was scared.

"At about 8 p.m. they started using guns, shooting bullets into the ground, but not really targeting anybody. Finally, at about 10 p.m. they started killing people."

The use of live ammunition to put down a protest is almost unheard of in China, where the authorities have come to rely on the rapid deployment of huge security forces, tear gas, water cannons and other nonlethal measures. But Chinese authorities have become increasingly nervous in recent months over the proliferation of demonstrations across the countryside.

By the government's own tally, there were 74,000 riots or other significant public disturbances in 2004 alone, a big jump from previous years.