Six officials suspended after fire in orphanage

Six county-level officials were suspended from their posts on Tuesday in the wake of a fire that killed seven children and injured one in an unlicensed orphanage in Lankao county, Henan Province.

"Six officials, including Yang Peimin, top civil affairs official, and Li Meijiao, deputy Party secretary of the civil affairs bureau, have been suspended from their posts," Hou Yongsheng, a publicity official from Lankao county, Henan Province, told the Global Times.

The investigation has found that the blaze was ignited by a child playing with fire, according to the People's Daily.

Calls to Yang remained unanswered by press time.

The fatal fire also put Yuan Lihai, 47, who has adopted over 100 children since the 1980s, in the public spotlight. The local government has also been criticized for causing the tragedy.

"I regret leaving them unattended when the fire took place. However, I will never regret my adoption of the abandoned kids. They would have died if I hadn't take them into my house," Yuan, told reporters Tuesday, with tears in her eyes.

Yuan was out taking the older children to school when the fire started, reports said.

Yuan is now in Lankao People's Hospital, suffering from high blood pressure and coronary heart disease.

Known as a good Samaritan among her neighbors, Yuan's ability to raise so many abandoned kids and her motives have been doubted by some. The Beijing Times reported that Yuan has sent the other 10 children to a welfare house in the provincial capital Kaifeng.

Critics said Yuan adopted children to get the basic living allowance.

"They can shoot me, if I adopted the children for money," Yuan told reporters in a previous interview.