FACTBOX: Disputes linger over the 1937 Nanjing Massacre

(Reuters) - Close to seven decades after the fall of China's former capital to invading Japanese troops, a raft of six new films are set to revisit the still-disputed wave of violence known as the Nanking Massacre that unfolded in the weeks following the city's occupation.

Here are five facts on the battle and its legacy:

WHEN WAS THE BATTLE FOUGHT?:

* Warplanes started bombing Nanjing in September 1937, but Japanese troops did not enter the city until December 1937, after encountering fierce resistance from Chinese forces in and around Shanghai in the preceding months. The fighting was some of the bitterest seen during the Sino-Japanese war which raged from 1937 to 1945.

WHY WAS NANJING ATTACKED?:

* Sun Yat-sen declared the eastern city of Nanjing (then called Nanking) the capital of the Republic of China in 1912, after overthrowing China's last imperial dynasty in 1911. Months later, warlords made Peking (then known as Peiping) China's capital. Nanjing became China's capital again in 1928. After the Japanese invaded Nanjing in 1937, Chiang Kai-shek moved the capital further west, to Chongqing, as Japanese troops swept south. Nanjing fell to the Japanese forces on December 13.

WHEN, AND WHAT, WAS THE "NANJING MASSACRE"?:

* After taking the city, Japanese troops reportedly began executing the city's civilians and prisoners of war. Violence continued through the winter until February. Thousands of homes were looted and tens of thousands of girls and women were said to have been raped. This chaotic six-week period after the city's capture is called the Nanjing Massacre or the Rape of Nanking by some historians.

WHAT HAPPENED AFTERWARDS?:

* The Japanese army surrendered to the Chinese in September 1945 and a postwar War Crimes Tribunal opened at the end of the year. Drawing on survivors' accounts, the Tokyo trial concluded 142,000 people were killed and some 20,000 women raped. However the death toll is still disputed. Chinese officials estimate 300,000 were killed, while some Japanese accounts say far fewer died. About 40,000 Japanese soldiers are also estimated to have been killed, but wartime media controls meant that many in Japan had not heard of the scale of the violence until the postwar tribunal.

LINGERING DISPUTES:

* Since the 1970s China and Japan have disagreed several times over how Nanjing is portrayed in each country's official history books. Some Japanese textbooks have said that Nanjing was a minor incident and that China has exaggerated the number of people killed.

Sources: Reuters