China executed on February 14 one of the country's worst serial killers, Yang Xinhai, who had murdered 67 people and committed a series of robberies and rapes.

Yang, 35, was in central China's Henan province after he was sentenced to death on February 1 by the Luohe city intermediate people's court in Henan, the Xinhua news agency reported from Zhengzhou, the provincial capital.

He had not appealed against the sentence.

Since 1999, Yang, who was described as a very 'insidious' criminal by the police, had committed crimes in 26 cases in the rural areas of Henan, Shandong, Anhui, and Hebei provinces.

He was arrested in November 2003 in Cangzhou city of north China's Hebei province.

Local police said Yang usually carried out criminal actives at night and cleared the scenes of crime before he ran away. Each time, he wore new clothes and shoes with larger size than his own.

Yang, who was born in July 1968 in Zhengyang county of Henan, had been imprisoned twice on charges of burglary and rape. He was released from prison in 1999.