A riot broke
out in a town near Beijing after its people learned of a plan to
use an abandoned school to quarantine people suspected of having
the SARS virus, officials said on Tuesday.
The riot
erupted on Sunday in Chagugang, a township of some 32,500 people
about 70 km southeast of Beijing, a local government official
said.
"The school
building was not going to be transformed into a hospital, but a
quarantine for people who have been in contact with SARS patients,"
said the official.
"From my
personal point of view, the spontaneous protection by the local
people of their immediate interests is understandable. But later,
some people took advantage of them to incite the riot," he
said.
It was also the
latest sign of the undercurrent of panic in and around Beijing,
which has reported nearly 1,200 infections and 59 deaths from
Sars.
At one village
on the outskirts of Beijing, residents had set up a checkpoint to
screen people coming out of the capital and bar those not from the
village.