A toddler who was twice run over by vans and then ignored by 18 passers-by as she lay critically injured in the street has died, the hospital treating her said today.

Surveillance camera footage of people walking past the two-year-old girl, nicknamed Yue Yue, as she lay bleeding and unconscious, sparked a wave of condemnation and soul-searching on China's popular social networking sites.

Yueyue, the Chinese toddler run over by two vehicles, was tended to by a trash collector.

A rubbish collector who finally moved the girl to the side of the street in the southern Chinese city of Foshan was hailed as a hero, but the incident also led many online commentators to question the state of Chinese morality.

"Yue Yue died of systemic organ failure," a spokesman from the hospital treating her told AFP, adding that no expense had been spared to try to save the girl, whose parents are migrant workers.