Police on Thursday kicked foreign journalists out of a city where the collapse of several schools in China's earthquake drew charges of corruption from parents of dead children.

Two AFP staff members were among at least six foreign media representatives held by police when they tried to report at collapsed schools one month to the day after the 12 May Sichuan earthquake.

Police grabbed the AFP staff and roughly threw them into a police van, damaging a camera, near the Juyuan Middle School where hundreds of students died in the quake.

They were later taken to government headquarters in Dujiangyan city and held there for more than an hour before being ordered out of the city.

"You cannot report anywhere in Dujiangyan. You must leave," a police officer said.

The evictions came just a day after a top national official denied to some of the same journalists that China was tightening up on media coverage in the disaster zone.

"Our open attitude has not changed," said Wang Guoqing, vice-director of the news division of the nation's Cabinet.

"We will soon host the Olympics and even more reporters will come. Our door is open. It will not close," he told reporters in the Sichuan capital, Chengdu.

Wang made the comment immediately after the journalists were handed new government-issued reporters' credentials that explicitly stated reporting was allowed in Dujiangyan and several other cities.

The AFP reporters evicted from Dujiangyan on Thursday were wearing those passes.

Despite promises of free reporting, authorities have displayed increasing unease over the issue of the roughly 7000 collapsed schools, many of which crumbled while adjacent buildings held firm.

Over the past week, the ruins of several such schools have been sealed off.

Parents have said shoddy construction, possibly linked to corruption, was responsible and have issued rare demands for the government to investigate the matter.

AFP