WUHAN - Police are investigating the deaths of two 4-year-old children in a school bus in Jingzhou city, Central China's Hubei province, on Tuesday.

The local government confirmed the investigation on Wednesday. The police have detained three people over the incident.

The girls, Peng Yiwei and Chen Qingxue, were left for nearly eight hours on the Redbud Kindergarten's bus.

According to Chutian Golden Newspaper, driver He Zhengkun, 62, and kindergarten teacher Tan Zuhong, 47, arrived in the bus at about 7:30 am at the Taihu district of Jingzhou to pick up the two children.

The newspaper said the vehicle, a minibus with more than 10 seats, reached the kindergarten at 8:30 am. Tan took the children to different classrooms but forgot to check if anyone was left on the bus.

He said he found Chen and Peng under the back seat when he returned to the van at 4 pm.

The two children were rushed to hospital, but were already dead.

According to a resident living near the kindergarten, surnamed He, the girls' angry relatives smashed up the kindergarten.

The exact cause of the girls' deaths is still under investigation, but the temperature in Jingzhou city reached 31 C on Tuesday.

Both girls were under the care of grandparents as their parents were working as migrants in distant cities.

"Her parents are working in Guangzhou, and they were very sad when they heard the news," Chen's grief-stricken grandfather said on a videotape provided to China Daily by Hubei TV station.

As well as detaining three people over the incident, police have put another six under surveillance.

"The three detained are He Zhengkun, Tan Zuhong and the director of the kindergarten," Sun Shihua, deputy director of the publicity department of the city's Jingzhou district, told China Daily on Wednesday.

Sun said the kindergarten was closed pending further investigation.

Yuan Guilin, an expert with Peking Normal University's Rural Development Institute, said such cases happened often because China does not have a school bus system.

"In some developed countries, the school bus system is directed by the government and regulated by the law," Yuan said, adding that school buses were not a general form of transport and should be treated more seriously.

Similar tragedies have been reported in several Chinese cities in recent years as the numbers of private kindergartens and preschools have increased.

On August 29, a 3-year-old boy was found dead after being left on a school bus in Sanya city of South China's Hainan province for nine hours. He was dozing when the other children were escorted off the bus.

On August 2, a 3-year-old girl suffocated to death after spending eight hours in a school bus in Anqing of the eastern Anhui province.

China Daily

(China Daily 09/15/2011 page3)