Metallurgical Corp of China Ltd reported on Wednesday that four of its employees from a construction site in Vietnam were slain and 126 others were injured in the height of last week's anti-China protests over the territory dispute in the South China Sea.

The numbers mentioned by the company doubled the figure of fatalities confirmed by the Chinese and Vietnamese governments previously.

Like Us on Facebook

Vietnamese protesters set fire to Chinese-owned factories and surged to the industrial zones in the southern part of the country to dissent the oil drilling activities conducted by China in a disputed area of the sea.

MCC relayed that thousands of protesters looted, destroyed, and flamed foreign-owned corporations in Vietnam during the May 14 riots, including the construction site of Tinh Steel Plant of Formosa Plastics, were several of its employees are assigned.

The Taiwanese-owned Formosa Plastics Group, one of the severely affected companies during the violent anti-China protests, informed Reuters on Monday that the operations at its steel facility located in central Vietnam had already resumed partially, and hoped that all work will return to its regular routine in the soonest possible time.

A Chinese engineering contractor working for the company said that the lives and the safety of all the 3,565 employees were put on severe risk.

Around 307 Chinese employees became the first set of people who got hurt at the Ha Tinh project, and they have been sent to a hospital in Chengdu in the province of Sichhuan on Sunday.

Another batch of employees, approximately 3,567 individuals, was sent to a port in Haikou in the province of Hainan.

MCC also reported that a majority of the Chinese employees working for Ha Tinh had safely returned to China, yet several individuals decided to stay in Vietnam.

The riots between Chinese and Vietnamese workers started in the province of Ha Tinh last Wednesday, where two people were killed and 140 were injured according to the Hanoi government. The Chinese foreign ministry also recorded the same number of casualties according to the Chinese news agency Xinhua.