More than one million people have paid visits to the Memorial Hall of the Victims of the Nanjing Massacre in the past three months after its expansion projects finished.

Zhu Chengshan, curator of the memorial hall, said the hall inaugurated in 1985 had received nearly 14 million visitors by June 2006.

The 25,000-square-meter expansion work started from the end of 2005 and finished in December, 2007.

On Dec. 13, 1937, Japanese troops began six weeks of destruction, pillage, rape and slaughter in Nanjing. Historical records show that more than 300,000 Chinese, including unarmed soldiers and innocent civilians, were murdered.

Each year, sirens wail in the capital of the eastern Jiangsu Province to mark the anniversary of the slaughter.

The memorial hall access was free to the public from 2004, which houses original remains, sculptures and historical records of the massacre.

"Over 7,000 exhibits in the memorial were contributed by overseas friends," Zhu said. "The expansion has been realized with 4.5 million yuan (608,000 U.S. dollars) in overseas donations."

(Xinhua News Agency March 10, 2008)