Five children suffocate in garbage bin

Five boys, all around 10 years old, who were found dead Friday morning in a garbage bin in the city of Bijie, Guizhou Province, were killed by carbon monoxide poisoning, according to an initial investigation statement released by the publicity department of the CPC Bijie City Committee on Sunday.

The carbon monoxide, which was released from a fire keeping them warm on Thursday night, killed them after traces of fire were found in the bin, said the statement. The local police had already ruled out murder as the cause of tragedy.

Tang Guangxing, deputy director of the department, told the Global Times Sunday that further investigations were still underway.

"The city's police are now cooperating with the provincial public security department on the case," said Tang.

An anonymous press officer from the department was quoted by the Beijing News as saying Sunday that these boys were first discovered by an old female garbage collector.

The identity of three of the boys has been confirmed. All three were locals from the city. The identity of the other two is still under investigation, said the statement.

This was after a staff member from the city's funeral home told the Global Times earlier that bodies of the five victims were still there.

"We are waiting for their relatives to claim the bodies, but so far no one has shown up," the staff member said Sunday afternoon.

The city's public security bureau declined to comment when reached Sunday.

A Web user named Li Yuanlong posted four photos and some details related to the death in an article on the online forum kdnet.net on Saturday.

The garbage bin, around 1.5 meters long and 1.3 meters wide with a cover on top, is designed to prevent smells from being released. "It is said that they were trying to keep warm by shutting the cover at night, and were killed by a lack of oxygen," Li told the Global Times Sunday.

Nearby residents said they had seen the boys living and playing at a nearby construction site. "These children had stayed in a makeshift tent built of a tarpaulin, a wooden board and bricks for days," local residents were quoted by the Beijing News as saying.

Wan Daqiang, a lawyer specializing in child protection from the Beijing Shangquan Law Firm, told the Global Times that both these boys' parents and local officials are responsible for the tragedy.

The temperature in the city plunged to a low of 6 C Thursday night, and the city is around 200 kilometers away from the provincial capital, Guiyang.