Chinese Outraged Over Dead Babies Found Along River

BEIJING, March 31, 2010 -- Chinese authorities sought to contain growing public anger over the reported discovery of 21 dead babies along a riverbank.

On one popular Chinese news Web site, Netease, more than 4,000 netizens posted comments after the reports about the babies were published online.

"How terrible, these babies are pitiful! They suffered when they were alive and after they died they didn't even get a decent burial," one wrote.

"Some officials talk as if ordinary people are living in this heavenly place but this case shows it is more like hell here," said another comment. ,

And another: "Throw all these health and hospital officials into the manure pit to teach them a lesson."

State media reported that the police detained two workers at a hospital morgue who dumped the 21 infants near a river in Jining, a city in Shandong province on China's east coast.

An investigation team of police and health officials said the two morgue workers had violated hospital rules. They "struck verbal agreements privately with relatives of the dead babies to dispose of the bodies" and took payments from them, according to the official Xinhua news agency.

"They subsequently transported the bodies secretly to the … river, but they had failed to bury the bodies completely," the report said.

News footage broadcast on a local television station showed the babies scattered along a dirt riverbank near a highway overpass. The video showed some babies wearing diapers, a few with hospital identification tags still around their tiny ankles.

Some of the babies appeared to be several months old and a local television reporter described the biggest infant as already two feet in length. One ID tag even identified a baby as a boy born in April 2009. At least one body was stuffed in a yellow plastic bag marked as "medical waste."

The hospital tags on some babies helped the investigators trace them back to a hospital affiliated with the Jining Medical University.