Officials at the Kashi City border police in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and the local foreign affairs department apologized on Tuesday to two Japanese reporters after they clashed late on Monday.
Both sides expressed understanding to the incident after local foreign affairs officials and border policemen had a talk with the two reporters at around 11 a.m. Tuesday in Kashi, Xinhua was told.
The two reporters clashed with local border police when they tried to film a controlled restricted area at around 11 p.m. Monday night.
The reporters, identified as Masami Kawakita, a 38-year-old photographer with the Chunichi Shimbun newspaper, and Shinji Katsuta, a 37-year-old reporter for Nippon Television, were taken away for investigation after the clash.
"Journalists are forbidden to enter the area controlled by border police, but the two disobeyed the rules," said Eskar, administration secretary of the regional office of foreign affair in Kashi.
"But we are sorry for the incident and the damage to the equipment that belonged to the reporters," Eskar added.
The border police said they would pay for repairing the equipment and medical bills for the physical checks of the journalists when they returned to Beijing.
The two reporters had accepted the apology and compensation and had notified their headquarters.
The two had gone to Kashi to cover a violent raid on border police on Monday that had killed at least 16 border police and left 16 others injured.
Of the 16, four are seriously injured, and two among them are still in critical conditions, Shi Dagang, party secretary of the Kashi region, told a press conference that commenced at 4:30 p.m. in Kashi.
The other 12 injured are now out of danger, he told reporters.
"We will go all out to save the injured policemen, and the best medical staff had been organized to treat them," Shi pledged.
Source: Xinhua
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