Jining government spokesman Gong Zhenhua told Xinhua that the two mortuary workers had "reached verbal agreements privately with relatives of the dead babies to dispose [of] the bodies” to avoid paying high cremation or burial fees. “They subsequently transported the bodies secretly to the Guangfu River,” but “failed to bury the bodies completely”.
The grim discovery was made by a local resident who first thought the bodies were dolls. "Then I found it was real. When I walked further, I found more bodies," he told reporters.
Television footage showed several bodies lying on the ground by the river, covered in mud, whilst emergency workers searched the area.
Eight of the bodies were said to be wearing identification bands showing they had come from the Affiliated Hospital of Jining Medical University. One body was stuffed in a yellow bag marked “medical waste”.
Public anger forced the authorities to suspend the hospital’s director and deputy director as well as another top official pending investigation.
Gong said the hospital staff had "violated regulations and carried out improper treatment" of the babies' bodies, which “indicates a lack of ethics and legal awareness of some hospital staff”.
Zhong Haitao, a senior official of the Jining health bureau, said the bodies could be those of aborted foetuses or of babies who died at the hospital.
Abortions are common in China, and cremation can be prohibitively expensive for poor families. Many prefer burial. However, the death of a young child is considered bad luck among some rural families, and the body is often abandoned or buried in unmarked graves.
Child abductions and trafficking are also widespread. Children are often sold into slavery or given to rich childless families. In some cases, missing children were used in scientific experiments. In one notorious incident, children’s remains were found in April 2006 in Lanshou (Gansu); the bodies had been cooked as part of some laboratory experiment.