BEIJING — Three children in a kindergarten in a northern Chinese town were killed when a classroom building collapsed, state media said.
The children died Saturday after they were rushed to a hospital with severe injuries, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
A man who answered the phone at the local county government of Yongqing in Hebei province on Sunday confirmed the three deaths but declined to give more details or his name.
The state broadcaster China Central Television said one other child was injured at the private kindergarten and that police held in custody the person in charge of the facility while investigating the cause of the collapse.
Building standards for schoolhouses are lax in China. On Monday, five middle school students in eastern China were killed after a wall along an outdoor basketball court suddenly fell on them.
Shoddy construction also was blamed for the high death toll among schoolchildren in a 2008 earthquake in the southwestern province of Sichuan that left nearly 90,000 people dead or missing.