(ECNS) -- A little girl and her younger brother died of suffocation after the room they were locked in caught fire in the southwestern Chinese city of Zhaotong in Yunnan Province.
The two preschoolers, aged between two and three years, lived with their grandfather while their parents worked in the eastern province of Zhejiang all year round. The grandmother helped take care of other children elsewhere.
On Sept. 17, their 52-year-old grandfather, Zhang Shuxiang, locked the two children in a room for fear they might play in a water tank in the yard, before going to harvest corn on the mountain.
The room later caught fire, killing both kids, who where found by neighbours helping to stop the blaze.
An initial investigation has excluded the possibility of arson. It's possible the kids played with a lighter, setting fire to a sofa, or an electrical fault started it.
In China, there are more than 61 million left-behind children who live in the countryside with elderly family members or alone while their parents migrate to find better paid work in other cities.
