NEWBORN BABY GIRL THROWN TO ITS DEATH FROM 17-STOREY BUILDING STILL WITH ITS UMBILICAL CORD ATTACHED IN CHINA

A Chinese newborn with her umbilical cord still attached was found dead after apparently being thrown from a 17-storey building. Highly distressing images of the infant lying in a pool of blood, too graphic to publish, have been circulated widely on social media and news websites in China. It is believed the girl's body was found on the busy pavement on Saturday, prompting an urgent police investigation to find the baby's mother. Officers questioned residents

of the building, which is in the city of Liaoyuan in China's eastern Jilin province, after the alarm was raised by horrified witnesses. Yesterday it was reported that the baby's mother may have been a vulnerable teenage girl with mental health issues.  Liaoyuan's Peninsula Morning News, which posted the update on Chinese microblogging site Weibo, said the investigation was still in its early stages. 

Neighbour On Chiang said he 'spotted something on the ground and didn't immediately recognise it', according to the Central European News agency.

'I saw the blood first, and then I realised it was the body of a tiny baby', he added.

'I called police and told them what I had seen, and said that I couldn't see anybody in the building that might have thrown the child, nor was anybody else around. It was really shocking.'

Reports suggested there was no lock on the door which accessed the building's stairwell, so the mother could have been someone living elsewhere. 

Residents who were interviewed by local journalists said they could not remember a pregnant woman living in the building. The incident has shocked many in China, a country where occasional horrific baby killings were often blamed on the government's one-child policy. The hugely unpopular policy demanding couples have no more than one child, despite many in China wanting to bear a son, was eased slightly in December 2013 but still exists for many. A 2001 report suggested up to a million girl foetuses were abandoned in China every year and tens of thousands of baby girls were abandoned.

In 2012 the nation was horrified when a premature baby girl was found with her throat cut in Anshan, Liaoning province. The baby survived and was taken to hospital. Other incidents, however, are based on a combination of fear, naivety and mental health issues. Last April a Chinese mother threw her one-year-old girl and her six-year-old brother under a 40-tonne truck in Cixi, Zhejiang province. The baby girl was crushed to death almost instantly.