Ignored toddler run over... twice

Surveillance cameras showed several people walk past the girl, named Yue Yue, after she was hit first by a van and then a truck outside her family's shop in the southern Chinese city of Foshan.

In a graphic video posted on YouTube the girl is shown as she is run over and lying in the middle of the road as scooters and other vehicles drive around her.

Xinhua said a rubbish collector finally came to the girl's aid and moved her to the kerb. The samaritan shouted for help but was ignored by several shopkeepers before he finally found the injured girl's mother who took her to hospital.

In response, Sina Weibo, a Chinese micro-blog similar to Twitter, wrote: "This society is seriously ill. Even cats and dogs shouldn't be treated so heartlessly."

It seems as though the bystanders may not be as callous as they appear since many probably feared prosecution for assisting the injured girl. In earlier incident a man who tried to help an elderly woman after she fell over was prosecuted, apparently because his intervention broke government rules on dealing with accident victims.

Doctors said Yue Yue was in a coma and unlikely to survive the ordeal.

"She would not be able to survive any operations. She's very close to brain death," a spokesman for the hospital treating her told AFP.

Police have detained the drivers of both vehicles involved in the incident, Xinhua said.