作者南華早報

More than 20 people were killed and rioters attacked Vietnam’s biggest steel plant overnight as violent anti-China protests spread to the centre of the country a day after arson and looting in the south, a doctor and newspapers said on Thursday.

The doctor at a hospital in central Ha Tinh province, 250 kilometres south of Hanoi, told Reuters five Vietnamese workers and 16 other people described as Chinese were killed in the rioting, one of the worst breakdowns in Sino-Vietnamese relations since the neighbours fought a brief border war in 1979.