A wild panda wandered into the city of Dujiangyan in Sichuan Province on Saturday and caused panic among local people.

After a chase lasting several hours, the rare animal was finally caught and returned to the wild.

The saga began in the early hours of the morning when young men drinking beer at a food stall saw a suspicious shape nimbly climb over a 3-metre-high fence and enter a housing estate.

As they chased the "thief," a female stallholder exclaimed, "That's a panda."

Some people blockaded entrances to the estate, while others went into the community to search for the panda. They found it calmly sitting on the roof of a bungalow.

But when people tried to reach it, the panda evaded them and ran from roof to roof.

A woman surnamed Xu living in a nearby block of flats said she was woken up by the noise of falling tiles and saw a black figure on the roof of the bungalow.

As she was about to call the police, she saw dozens of people and realized that the black figure was a panda.

"The panda was amazingly agile and totally different from those at the zoos," Xu said.

After 20 minutes, the panda jumped off the roof and climbed over an iron gate and entered another yard, disappearing into the darkness.

Several hours later, the police received a report that the panda was in a river.

Rescuers saw the panda slowly swim downstream and followed it along the bank.

After covering 2 kilometres, the panda approached a riverside phoenix tree, grabbed a branch and climbed up it to rest.

As it was still dark and the trunk of the tree was right over the river, the chasing people waited until daybreak to catch it.

At 10:00 am, an anaesthetist used a rifle to put the panda to sleep.

Firemen then carefully climbed up the tree, tied the panda to a rope and lifted it down.

(China Daily 07/18/2005 page1)