Two siblings were killed in a village in southwest China's Guizhou Province while their father and elder sister were not at home, local police said Wednesday.
Police received a report of the deaths of a 15-year-old girl and her 12-year-old brother at home in Zhongxin village in Nayong county of Bijie city on Tuesday morning.
Police investigation showed that the two died from homicide.
The dead girl was a drop-out who had suffered from the sequela of encephalitis B and her brother was a primary school student. Their mother had died, leaving them at the care of the father.
The investigation found that the father left home on Sunday and his elder daughter, 17, went to see a relative on Monday night and did not return home.
The latest case adds another tragedy to the poor mountainous region where four "left-behind" children of one family, aged 5 to 13, died after drinking pesticide at home in a village also in the city of Bijie on June 9.
The tragic deaths exposed the plight of a vast number of poor children without parental care in China.
China has more than 60 million children in rural areas who are left with relatives, usually grandparents. According to a 2013 report released by the All-China Women's Federation, nearly 3.4 percent of these children live alone.
The "left-behind" children fall easy victims to such tragedies as killing, trafficking and suicide.
In 2012, five street children also in Bijie died from carbon monoxide poisoning when burning charcoal for warmth in a roadside dumpster.
China's one-child policy allows rural families and ethnic minorities to have more children than the urban norm. Also some pay fines for more children than policy allows.
