Beijing- China has sacked or given other punishments to 13 local officials who used crudely faked photographs to claim the rare South China tiger had returned to forests in the northern province of Shaanxi, state media said on Monday.

The officials held press conferences to show the digital photographs, which were taken by farmer Zhou Zhenglong in Shaanxi's Zhenping county last October, the official China Daily newspaper said.

They insisted that the photographs were real, even after internet users pointed to problems such as leaves as big as the tiger's head, the tiger's body appearing completely flat, and an identical pose in several photographs.

A long-running media and online saga over the authenticity of photographs continued despite the obvious problems, and some online commentators called for the central government to investigate and give a ruling.

The newspaper said Zhou, who was recently arrested for fraud, had placed a cut-out photograph amongst grass, trees and other plants to take his pictures.

When doubts surfaced over his claims, an accomplice carved a wooden tiger paw that Zhou used to make prints in the snow which he then photographed.

Two deputy heads of the provincial forestry bureau, which oversees wildlife conservation, were sacked for backing his claims.

A provincial media official and two wildlife officials were also sacked, the newspaper said.

The number of South China tigers in the wild was estimated at between 30 and 80 in 1996, and many experts believe it is now already extinct in the wild.

A county government official and a local television reporter in the central province of Hunan were sacked in March after they borrowed a Siberian tiger from a circus to fake footage of a South China tiger in the wild. (dpa)