A total of 886 Chinese police officers died on duty and 12,809 were injured in the past two years of the nation's "strike-hard" campaign against criminals, said Vice-Minister of Public Security Bai Jingfu on Thursday.

Bai told a working conference on national social security that China had maintained a relatively stable public security situation in the two years of the campaign and the public opinion on security had been improving.

Police departments would continue the "strike-hard" campaign since violent crime was still occurring in some places and certain illegal forces still existed, Bai said.

From April 2001 to April 2003, the police resolved over five million criminal cases, and cracked 629 organized crime groups and 14,768 "gangster" organizations, according to official statistics.

(Xinhua News Agency September 26, 2003)