Officials have apologised to a Chinese woman who was forced to have an abortion while seven months pregnant and have suspended three people responsible for the incident. The move came just days after shocking photographs emerged on the web showing the mother, Feng Jianmei, lying next to her blood-covered baby minutes after the procedure took place. Officials have apologised in a move to allay public anger over the case, which has triggered renewed criticism of China's widely hated one-child limit. Designed to control the country's exploding population, the policy has led to violent and forced abortions and sterilizations, as local authorities try to meet birth quotas set by Beijing. In this latest case, Feng, 27, told local media that she was forceably injected with a chemical to induce an abortion and her child was stillborn 36 hours later at a hospital in Shaanxi province. Local officials said they were investigating the incident, as Chinese law prohibits abortions beyond six months. The grisly photographs, which were taken by Feng's sister, have shocked anti-abortion groups in China - and fury is spreading around the world. Because she already had a five-year-old daughter, said Feng, local birth-control authorities ordered her to pay a fine of £4,000. She didn't have the money, she said, so a team from the local family planning authority in Shannxi province came to collect her from her home and take her to hospital for the forced abortion. As outrage spread around anti-abortion groups in China, the authorities strenuously denied Feng's version of the events. Li Yuongjou, deputy chief of Ankang's family department, said the reality was that 'Feng was not forced to abort'. He said: 'A lot of us tried for days to educate her. She agreed to the abortion herself.' He added that in China an abortion is allowed up to 28 weeks, saying: 'It's not illegal to conduct "medium term" induction of labour.' And he admitted, however, that in his town the local target of enforcing the one-child policy had not been achieved for two consecutive years and the authorities were acting more strenuously to see that the target covering 95 per cent of the population was reached. But Feng strenuously denied this version of events. She told NBC: 'No, I didn’t agree to do it. How can I agree to do that, as a mother?' A report from Xinhua, China’s official government news agency, Thursday said the Shaanxi Provincial Family Planning Committee has sent an investigation team to Zengjiazhen and requested local government to have the responsible parties held accountable.