BEIJING, Jun 1 (AP) -- Several hundred people staged a peaceful demonstration Friday against a planned chemical plant in southern China on which work was suspended after protests circulated by mobile phone over possible health dangers.

Protesters gathered for several hours near city hall in Xiamen, where the facility was to be built, witnesses said. Police were present but there were no reports of violence or arrests.

Local authorities announced Wednesday they were suspending construction of the plant after residents sent nearly 1 million text messages in protest, state media reported. The US$1.4 billion (€1.04 billion) facility would produce paraxylene, which is used to make plastics, polyester and film, and can damage the central nervous system or even cause death.

An employee who answered the phone at the board of directors office of the company building the plant, Tenglong Aromatic PX (Xiamen) Co., said several hundred people took part in the protest Friday morning. He refused to give his name or any other details.

The manager of a nearby office building, who only gave his surname Hu, said the protest was peaceful and lasted for several hours in the presence of police.

"The protest shows people in Xiamen have strong awareness of environmental protection," said a city official, who only gave her surname Wang.

Communist leaders, long indifferent to the environmental cost of China's economic boom, have become more sensitive to pollution complaints after accidents that contaminated rivers, disrupting water supplies to major cities. Farmers throughout the country have protested pollution that has tainted water supplies and ruined farmland.

Demand for chemicals such as paraxylene is soaring as China's export-driven manufacturing industries expand.

Photographs posted on a Chinese real estate Web site and labeled as images of Friday's protest showed a crowd filling a traffic intersection and rows of men in uniform standing shoulder to shoulder. Two people could be seen holding up a red banner, but no text was visible.

The photographs were retrieved through the cache function of a Chinese search engine and could no longer be seen on the real estate site. No other information about the incident could be found online, suggesting that authorities had removed references from bulletin boards.

The plant was due to be located 16 kilometers (10 miles) from the center of Xiamen, a center for Taiwanese and Hong Kong investment. The nearest homes were some 1,500 meters (one mile) away, according to news reports.

Construction was halted after residents sent nearly 1 million text messages to friends and family, urging the government to renounce plans to build the plant, state media has reported. A widely circulated message likened the facility to "an atomic bomb in Xiamen."