By Vivi Lin and Benjamin Kang Lim

BEIJING (Reuters) - The disgraced former Communist Party chief of a city in northern China was sentenced to life in prison on Thursday for his role in one of the bloodiest rural riots in recent years, victims and their families said.

A court in Handan in Hebei province convicted He Feng, former party chief of Dingzhou city, of hiring thugs to beat up villagers for protesting against low compensation for land seized to make way for a power plant last June.

"He Feng should have been sentenced to death. He organised and planned it ... This verdict was too lenient," Wei Long, who was injured in the attack and whose mother and uncle are still in hospital, told Reuters by telephone.

Another source whose father was killed but who requested anonymity said victims and their families had decided to appeal against the verdict.

Four co-defendants were sentenced to death for their roles in the attack which left six residents of Shengyou village dead and dozens injured, families of victims said. Dingzhou has jurisdiction over Shengyou. Five co-defendants were sentenced to life in prison.

A court official, reached by telephone, declined to comment.

State media have said 27 people were charged with intentionally inflicting injury upon others. It was unclear how many of the other defendants were convicted or what sentences they received.

Some family members of victims were allowed into the courtroom, but they were not allowed to take notes or record the proceedings.

The editor in chief of the Beijing News, which broke the news of the clash, has been sacked.

The villagers later won back the land when the government in an about-faced decided not to go ahead with the requisition.

China has been grappling with an acknowledged increase in social unrest, sparked by public anger over issues ranging from land grabs without proper compensation and official corruption to a yawning wealth gap.

The Ministry of Public Security has put the total number of "public order disturbances, obstructions of justice, gatherings of mobs and stirring up of trouble" at 87,000 last year, up 6.6 percent from 2004.

To curb growing unrest, two top generals in the People's Armed Police pledged last month to boost the "combat effectiveness" of the one-million-strong paramilitary police.

In December, paramilitary police opened fire on residents of Dongzhou village in the southern province of Guangdong protesting against a lack of compensation for land appropriated for a new power plant. The government says three villagers were killed.