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.

The two reporters clashed with local border police when they tried to film a controlled restricted area.

The two were 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.

"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 had accepted the apology and compensation and had notified their headquarters.

The reporters 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.

(Xinhua News Agency August 5, 2008)