BEIJING - A GROUP of villagers from central China apologised to a Belgian television crew who said they were attacked while trying to report on HIV conditions there last year, a local official said on Friday.

The alleged Nov 27 attack occurred in Henan province at a village with a large number of HIV-positive people ahead of World Aids Day. It also came a month after the government announced that relaxed reporting regulations for foreign media during the Beijing Olympics had become permanent policy.

The TV crew from Flemish public broadcaster VRT said assailants pulled members of the crew from their vehicle, beat them and took their notes, money and other equipment.

Wang Yuejin, deputy director of the news department at the foreign affairs office of Henan government, said the incident occurred between the journalists and local villagers in Shuangmiao.

'The villagers wrote them a letter explaining the misunderstanding and friction,' he said.

Henan has been highly sensitive to reporting on Aids since the virus that causes the disease spread widely there in the 1990s through unhygienic blood-buying rings, which allegedly operated with official protection. Officials there have been accused in the past of abusing Aids victims and advocates.

VRT said in a statement Thursday that it had received an apology letter from what it said were five local Henan officials. It was also offered about US$200 (S$295) in compensation for flights its crew missed that day. The journalists have still not got back a missing tape of the incident, it said. It did not say who the officials were.

'We'll never get back that missing tape, I'm afraid, but I consider this letter and small compensation as a symbolic gesture,' Tom Van de Weghe, one of the reporters, said in the statement.

Journalists are now supposed to be able to travel and report freely in most areas of China, although certain topics remain touchy, especially with local officials.

Mr Van de Weghe said he was hit twice on the head in the attack and that villagers identified the assailants as men who worked for local officials.

The incident drew protests from the International Federation of Journalists and from Belgian authorities. -- AP