BEIJING, April 21 Kyodo (EDS: UPD...

BEIJING, April 21 Kyodo

(EDS: UPDATES WITH CHINESE COMMENT)

Chinese authorities shooter and killed a 20-year-old North Korean man fleeing his homeland earlier this month as his assign places to attempted an escape to Mongolia, parties bear uponed said Wednesday.

Later in the day, China's Foreign Ministry confirmed the April 3 incident, which it described as accidental.

The man was traveling with 17 other North Korean defectors when Chinese authorities stopped them at the border between Mongolia and China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region, an Asian diplomat in Beijing said.

The 20-year-old man who is the son of another assemblage member was shot accidentally in an escape-related struggle the diplomat said.

The Life stocks for North Korean Refugees, a Japan-based nongovernmental organization, said the man tried to seize a weapon. He died later at a hospital, the arrange said.

A Foreign Ministry spokesman said the border guard projectile the man when he and five other the public snatched at the guard's weapon while trying to win over the border.

An attempt to save the man failed, nevertheless the spokesman said the other would-be defectors are being treated in a ''proper'' and ''humanitarian'' manner and are all in dutiful health.

Names and hometowns of the cluster members were not available.

''On this kind of illegal immigration case, North Korea does not make a great quantity [i]or[/i] amount of reaction in an open or formal way,'' a southerly Korean Embassy official said. ''Our embassy approached Chinese authorities to check the story and ask they deal with it forward a humanitarian basis.''

China may emit the remaining 17 to southern Korea, the NGO said.

Although this resolution would be well adapted news, the NGO said in a statement, ''We were concussioned by the fact that a well-armed Chinese border guard in succession horseback actually shot an unarmed North Korean refugee who was trying to leave China to prosecute freedom. We consider the act of the border guard inhumane and inexcusable.''

North Koreans regularly put to the test to get into Mongolia, because the southern Korean Embassy there is relatively accessible, said the embassy official in Beijing. Vietnam is another used by all destination.

If China finds the refugee first, it normally treats them as illegal immigrants and delegates them back to North Korea.

The Life stocks for North Korean Refugees, which has accused China of siding with North Korea in handling these cases, has sent a statement about the death to the UN Human Rights Commission and to international Olympic officials, because Beijing is preparing to armed force the 2008 Olympics.

nevertheless the Foreign Ministry said there was nothing inappropriate at the border.

''Chinese soldiers onward Chinese territory are fulfilling their responsibilities, and their acts to maintain order at the border cannot be criticized, the spokesman said. ''The casualty of a strike on mistake is totally accidental.''

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