Taiwan's Foxconn Technology Group, the world's largest contract electronics maker, today closed its Taiyuan plant in northern China after about 2,000 workers staged a riot at a company dormitory.

According to several Chinese reports, about 2,000 workers at Taiyuan plant located in Shanxi provincial capital were involved in a brawl on Sunday night at 11 pm at a privately managed dormitory near the factory leaving forty people injured.

Around 5,000 policemen were dispatched to the scene, but were able to bring the fight under control after 10 hours at 9 am today.

Although it was not clear what triggered the fight among workers, but an initial investigation by company officials revealed that workers from Shandong province clashed with those from Henan province.

In a posting on the China's microblogging site Sina Weibo, user "Jo-Liang" said that a few security guards beat a worker almost to death.

Photos posted on Sina Weibo showed a burned vehicle and police with riot helmets, shields and clubs inside the factory grounds.

Pictures released by Reuters show workers clearing glass pieces from broken windows at a building near an entrance gate and a column of paramilitary police trucks parked inside the factory premises.

The Taiyuan plant employs around 79,000 workers and makes and assembles various electronic devices, but is not clear whether it also assembles Apple's new iPhone 5 that was released last week.

Taipei County, Taiwan-based Foxconn, which employs about 1 million people on the Chinese mainland, is dubbed as one of the world's most isolated and secretive companies, churning out products for Nintendo, Apple, Nokia, Sony, Hewlett Packard and Dell.

Labour activists from Hong Kong have accused the company of having an extremely fast assembly line, employees forced to work excess overtime, a rigid management style and harsh discipline imposed on employees that many people believe stems out of chairman Terry Gou's past military exposure (See: Apple audit of Foxconn reveals serious labour laws violations). 

Dubbed as a "sweatshop" by activists, at least 19 people have jumped from the company's factories in China from 2009, with 12 reported deaths. A further 20 employees, who attempted to commit suicides, were stopped by officials in the company before they could throw themselves off from the buildings (Foxconn again in limelight as 150 workers threaten mass suicid).