Four reports published in the Danish press in 1937 and 1938 gave an eyewitness account of the war crime.

They were written by Bernhard Alp Sindberg, a Dane working for the Jiangnan Cement Factory in Nanjing in the late 1930s.

One of Sindberg's reports, among those found in a Danish public library, was quoted by China Youth Daily as saying: "Blood, blood, everywhere here was drenched in blood. The Chinese were bled decidedly."

The reports, written in Danish, were recently translated into English, becoming new evidence of Japanese war crimes in China.

Sindberg was a humanitarian foreigner who tried to protect Chinese from the cruelty of Japanese troops during the war.

Sindberg's original reports were found in a Danish library after more than three years' research by journalists and historians both from China and Denmark.

Sindberg wrote a series of eyewitness reports about his experiences in the war zone in China in the late 1930s.

Historians have collected detailed information about Sindberg and pictures he took in Shanghai and Nanjing in 1937. They also found Sindberg's letters to his friends and relatives in Denmark in early 1938 and have contacted his relatives, historians said.

(China Daily June 10, 2003)