A city in China issued new rules Sunday on disposing of dead babies after two mortuary workers were detained last week for dumping the corpses of 21 infants in a river, state press said.
Under the regulations the local government will pay for cremations of infants if the parents are unavailable or cannot cover the costs, Xinhua news agency said.
Two hospital workers were sacked and two mortuary workers arrested when the remains were discovered in a river near the eastern city of Jining last month.
At least eight bodies had tags indicating they were from the Jining Medical University hospital, Xinhua said.
Mortuary workers Zhu Zhenyu and Wang Zhijun were detained by police on suspicion of accepting fees from relatives to dispose of the babies, Xinhua said.
The two allegedly transported the bodies secretly to the Guangfu River but failed to bury them properly, it added.
The city government ordered health authorities to launch a general overhaul of body disposal at its hospitals.
The bodies have been cremated, earlier reports said.
Abortion is common in China, where at least 13 million births are terminated every year, due in part to the nation's so-called "one-child" family-planning rules.
The policy is widely blamed for fuelling abortions in particular of female foetuses in China, where boys are traditionally favoured.
Last June, a hospital in central China was found to have dumped the bodies of two adults and six aborted foetuses at a construction site after failing to locate relatives of the dead, state media reported.
A bag containing severed human limbs was also discovered in the case, in the city of Xiangfan.
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