Local authorities confirmed that five vagrant children were found dead in a trash bin in Southwest China's Guizhou province on Friday morning.

The investigation into their deaths is ongoing, and the children have not been identified. The government attaches great importance to the case, Xie Di, a publicity official from the city government of Bijie, said on Sunday.

Li Yuanlong, a netizen at club.kdnet.net, a popular online forum, wrote on Friday night that the children climbed inside a trash bin to stay warm on Bijie city's Huandong Road and suffocated.

The trash bin is about 1.5 meters high and 1.3 meters wide, according to photos that Li posted on Saturday.

An elderly woman who picks up trash found the victims, who were around the age of 10, in the trash bin, Beijing News reported. Police have ruled out foul play, the report quoted an anonymous publicity official as saying.

The report said the temperature reached a low of 6 C on Thursday night.

The children had been living near the trash bin in a shelter they built using plastic tarpaulin, cement blocks and plywood, Li quoted residents who lived nearby as saying.

Ma Li, director of a rescue center for homeless children in Xuzhou, Jiangsu province, said the children may have eaten food they found in the trash bin and died from food poisoning.

Li said the tragedy exposed an unresolved dilemma in the government's rescue work for vagrant children.

"Rescue centers don't have a long-term effective way to help these children as they can only provide food and shelter for a maximum of 10 days. After that, the rescue centers are required to send these children home," he said.

Most vagrant children don't want to go home as they have bad relationships with their parents and may be victims of domestic violence, he said.

"For this reason, many children shy away from rescue centers and feel reluctant to seek help," he said.

The civil affairs department and rescue centers hand out blankets and padded coats during the winter to the homeless, but more needs to be done, he said.

The government should work out a new mechanism that encourages NGOs, schools and individuals to participate in helping vagrants, he urged.

Contact the writers at hedan@chinadaily.com.cn and sujiangyuan@chinadaily.com.cn