A 9-year-old girl in Lu'an, Anhui province, was shot dead when three men who were hunting mistakenly believed the girl to be a rabbit, police said on Wednesday.

According to Lu'an police, the case occurred at about 6 pm on Aug 14 when the three suspects, surnamed Zhang, Wu and Luo, all residents of Lu'an, went hunting in a pick-up truck with a high-pressure air gun and saw the girl, surnamed Wu, playing on farmland.

"Zhang shot the girl in the head with the gun from the pick-up truck. The men then found the 'prey' was a girl and fled. The girl's parents later took the girl to hospital, but she died of serious injuries that evening," police sources said.

The three suspects turned themselves in to police on Aug 15 and confessed that they mistakenly shot the girl, thinking she was a rabbit.

The suspects were detained and the case is under further investigation.