NANJING, (China), Dec 13: Sirens wailed in China's Nanjing city on Thursday, 75 years after Japanese troops embarked on mass killing and rape, as a modern-day territorial row between the two saw Tokyo scrambling fighter jets.

The two countries — the world's second- and third-largest economies — have extensive trade and business links, but the weight of Japan's wartime atrocities still bears heavily on their relationship. Nearly 10,000 people sang the Chinese national anthem at a commemoration at the Nanjing Massacre Museum, as soldiers in dress uniforms carried memorial wreaths across a stage and officials urged remembrance of the past. Beforehand an elderly woman cried as she placed flowers by the names of family members listed among the victims on a grey stone wall, and a group of Chinese and Japanese Buddhist monks chanted sutras to pray for world peace.

“We are here to recall history, grieve for compatriots who suffered and died, and educate the people... about the lessons of history,” said Nanjing Communist Party chief Yang Weize, the only government official who spoke.

China says 300,000 civilians and soldiers died in a spree of killing, rape and destruction in the six weeks after the Japanese military entered its then capital on Dec 13, 1937.—AFP