At least 10,000 people died in Tiananmen Square massacre, secret British cable from the time alleged

The newly declassified document, written little more than 24 hours after the massacre, gives a much higher death toll than the most commonly used estimates which only go up to about 3,000.

It also provides horrific detail of the massacre, alleging that wounded female students were bayoneted as they begged for their lives, human remains were “hosed down the drains”, and a mother was shot as she tried to go to the aid of her injured three-year-old daughter.

Written on 5 June 1989 by Sir Alan Donald, the then-British ambassador to China, the hitherto secret cable has now been placed in the UK National Archives at Kew, where it was found by the news website HK01.