Parents demand answers for children killed in quake
BEIJING, May 26 (Reuters) - Hundreds of angry parents whose children died under a collapsed Chinese school in this month's earthquake ignored an official pleading with them on his knees and demanded a thorough probe, local media said on Monday.
The toll from the May 12 quake in the southwestern province of Sichuan has risen above 62,600 and officials said at least 6,581 of the dead were children and teachers crushed when school buildings collapsed.
China has vowed to take severe measures against any state-owned companies found to have built substandard public buildings.
Parents have accused authorities of cutting corners and failing to meet safety standards. Last week, the housing minister conceded that cost-cutting may have played a part.
The parents of the 127 pupils killed at Fuxin No.2 Primary School in Mianzhu on Sunday marched in the street, the Southern Metropolis Daily said in a report on its website (www.nddaily.com) on Monday.
Mianzhu's Communist Party chief knelt down in front of the procession, pleading with parents not to petition officials higher up and vowing a thorough investigation, but was ignored, the report said.
"Please believe the Mianzhu Party committee can resolve the issue. Please do not march on," the party chief was quoted as telling the parents.
Officials in Deyang city, which oversees Mianzhu, later bused the group to a government building for a meeting which was moved outdoors when a strong aftershock hit, the report said.
Vice mayor Zhang Jinming said the government would investigate "all kinds of man-made problems" related to the quality of the school building, it said.
Parents questioned the credibility of an expert panel chosen to investigate the school collapses and representatives of victims' families would be included, Zhang said.
The parents last week held a mourning ceremony and a protest on the debris of the school, holding up a banner saying "While we cannot stop a natural disaster, human errors are the most hated".
The quake damaged 13,451 schools, the head of Sichuan's education department said on Saturday. (Reporting by Guo Shipeng; Editing by Nick Macfie and Alex Richardson)
