A newborn baby has been rescued after being flushed down a toilet in a Chinese apartment building, according to state media reports.
Firefighters in eastern China rescued the abandoned baby boy lodged in a sewage pipe directly beneath a toilet commode, in a case which has sparked anger on social media sites.
Residents in Jinhua, in the wealthy coastal province of Zhejiang, alerted firefighters on Saturday afternoon (local time) after hearing the two-day-old baby crying in the fourth-floor squat lavatory.
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Attempts to pull him out failed, so rescuers sawed away a section of the pipe with the baby inside and took him to a local hospital.
Firefighters and doctors spent nearly an hour taking the pipe apart piece by piece with pliers and saws, before the newborn was freed with its placenta still attached.
From the time he was found until when he was taken out, the baby was stuck in the pipe for at least two hours.
The 2.3 kilogram boy suffered cuts to his face and limbs and is now in a stable condition.
Police are looking for his parents and the person who abandoned him is suspected of murder.
Social media users vent fury at perpetrators
The news triggered hundreds of thousands of comments on China's hugely popular social media site Weibo, with users expressing good wishes for the baby and fury at those who presumably abandoned him.
"I can never accept or forgive the behaviour of dumping the baby with his placenta and umbilical cord attached into the toilet pipe," wrote one user.
"Can these people be called human beings? The animal to human ratio among the grown-ups is rising inexorably."
Another user said watching the rescue left her distraught.
"Seeing the little one wriggling and groaning as the pipe was torn apart bit by bit wrings my heart," the user said.
"You've lived through the hardest moment in your life and your future will definitely be smooth."
There are frequent reports in Chinese media of babies being abandoned often shortly after birth, a problem often attributed to young mothers unaware they were pregnant.
Chinese babies born out of wedlock are sometimes also abandoned because of social and financial pressures, and baby girls are often unwanted in a society which puts greater value on boys.
The country's one-child policy can also mean heavy fines for couples who have more than one baby.
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