Hundreds of police dismantle cross at Wenzhou church, while fire guts Ningbo cathedral

Hundreds of police took down a church's cross yesterday in Wenzhou, known as "China's Jerusalem" because of its many houses of worship, amid a crackdown on church buildings in the Zhejiang provincial city.

Evangelist Qu Linuo said he and about 200 others had rushed to the Longgang Huai En Church to protect the building, but peacefully made way for the police, who used a crane to remove the three-metre red cross from its steeple.

The authorities told the church the cross violated building height limits and returned it to the parishioners, who wept and prayed around it, said Qu, who is a member of another church. Photographs posted on social media showed parishioners holding banners reading: "Anti-graft, anti-corruption, protect religion."

A man at the county's public security office said he knew nothing about the incident and the Longgang police did not answer phone calls.

Meanwhile, in neighbouring Ningbo, a fire largely destroyed one of the mainland's oldest churches, state media reported, gutting the inside of the late 19th-century structure.

"The inside of the building is totally destroyed," a firefighter told Xinhua after the blaze at the gothic-style Jiangbei Cathedral.