The video, acquired by the Washington Post from a local farmer, shows a gang of young men armed with pipes and shovels as they charge a huddle of peasant protesters who have refused to abandon their land to developers.

After a short one-sided battle, a single farmer is left on the ground, where he is beaten senseless by an assailant armed with a pole. Soon after the cameraman is attacked. There is an explosion, the sound of gunshots and screams of "Run!", then the images suddenly end.

According to the Beijing News, six villagers and one attacker were killed in the incident and at least 48 people were injured, eight of them seriously. The fighting, which occurred last Saturday, was reportedly the latest and most violent of several assaults by up to 300 thugs who were hired by a local utilities company to force the peasants off their land.

Tensions had been simmering since 2003, when the villagers refused to accept an offer from Hebei Guohua Power, a state-owned company which wanted to build a storage facility on their land, about 140 miles south-west of Beijing.

Although local officials approved the sale of the property, the farmers refused to budge. Many have been living in tents on the land ever since, despite increasingly violent attempts to force them to move.

In April during one attack in the middle of the night, the villagers captured a hostage, Zhu Xiaorui.

The 23-year-old told the Washington Post he had been paid 100 yuan (£7), armed with a metal pole and told to "teach a lesson" to the farmers.

He was released earlier this week after contrite officials visited the village and offered 50,000 yuan compensation to the families of the bereaved.

The climbdown by the authorities appears to have been prompted by the coverage of the clashes in the domestic and international media.

According to Outlook, a Communist party-backed magazine about 58,000 protests took place across the country in 2003, a rise of 15% over the previous year.

With China in the midst of a spectacular and often unregulated spurt of development, many peasants are thrown off their property, usually with little compensation.

Wen Jiabao, the prime minister, appears anxious to avoid a repeat of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown and has adopted a relatively relaxed stance to such protests.

Reprisals against the demonstrators have been few, and many punishments have been meted out to officials.