HONG KONG: For months, China has tried to turn the tables on the US to counter accusations that it hacks America's computers and networks. Now, former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden may have handed Beijing a weapon in its cyber war of words with Washington.

In an interview with the South China Morning Post newspaper, Snowden claims the US has long been attacking a Hong Kong university that routes all Internet traffic in and out of the semiautonomous Chinese region.

Snowden said the National Security Agency’s 61,000 hacking targets around the world include hundreds in Hong Kong and mainland China, the paper reported late on Wednesday. The Post, Hong Kong's main English-language newspaper, said Snowden had presented documents to support those claims, but it did not describe the documents and said it could not verify them.

Snowden’s allegations about U.S. hacking add a new twist to the long-running battle between Washington and Beijing over cybersecurity. The U.S. been delivering a steady flow of reports accusing China's government and military of computer-based attacks against America. U.S. officials have said recently that the Chinese seem more open to trying to work with the U.S. to address the problems.

Snowden's allegations follow comments last week from China's Internet security chief, who told state media that Beijing has amassed huge amounts of data on U.S.-based hacking. The official held off on blaming the U.S. government, saying it would be irresponsible and that the better approach is to seek to cooperate in the fight against cyberattacks.

On Thursday, Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Hua Chungying said China is a “major victim” of cyberattacks but did not lay blame.

The reaction was stronger online. Air Force Col Dai Xu, known for the hawkish opinions he voices on his Sina Weibo microblog, wrote: “I have always said, the United States' accusations about Chinese hacking attacks have always been a case of a thief crying for another thief to be caught.’’

The Post cited Snowden as saying the NSA has been hacking into computers in Hong Kong and mainland China since 2009, citing documents he showed the paper, which it said it could not verify. It didn’t provide further details about the documents.

He said that among the targets was the Chinese University of Hong Kong, which hosts the Hong Kong Internet Exchange, the main hub for the city's Internet traffic. —AP