Thousands of students in an east China city are being forced to work at a Foxconn plant after classes were suspended at the beginning of the new semester, it has been revealed.

The rumored iPhone5

Students from Huai'an in Jiangsu Province were driven to a factory in the city run by Taiwan's Foxconn Technology Company after the plant couldn't find sufficient workers for the production of Apple's much-anticipated iPhone 5, they said in online posts.

A student majoring in computing at the Huaiyin Institute of Technology said 200 students from her school had been driven to the factory.

They started work on the production line last Thursday and were being paid 1,550 yuan (US$243.97) a month for working six days a week, she said.

But they had to pay hundreds of yuan for food and accommodation, she said in an online post under the name of mengniuIQ84.

Several other students from at least five colleges backed up what she said, saying they were being forced to work for 12 hours a day.