A TWO-year-old Chinese girl is dead after she was struck by two vehicles and then ignored by passers-by.

More than a dozen people walked past her as she lay bleeding in the street, The South China Morning Post reported.

The girl, known as Yue Yue, died yesterday after slipping into a coma following Thursday's accident. The vehicles struck her after she wandered out of her parents' shop in Foshan, part of the southern Guangdong province near Hong Kong.

The China Daily, the country's official English-language newspaper, said she had been declared 'brain dead' and could die at any time.

But News website Shanghaiist said doctors at General Hospital of Guangzhou Military Command confirmed she had died from "severe brain injuries".

Closed-circuit TV footage obtained by Southern Television Station shows a white van hitting the girl, one of its front wheels driving over her body. It then pauses momentarily, before driving away, running her over with its back wheel in the process.

Three people then walked past, before a truck drove over her, the driver not appearing to notice. More than a dozen people then walked or drove past the badly-bleeding girl and either ignored her or did not notice her.

Finally, after seven minutes had passed, a woman collecting rubbish runs to her aid, picking up her motionless body before her mother runs outside and carries the girl away.

Yue Yue's father, 31, who did not give his name, told the Post, "I wonder if the driver tried to kill my daughter because he thought that by doing so he wouldn't have to pay as much compensation?"

Both drivers were arrested, and the driver of the white van was said to be being held by police.

Yangcheng Evening News quoted the man who first struck Yue Yue as saying, "If it was you who hit someone, you'd run too. You can see the little girl, looking around when she walked. If she walked properly, how could I hit her?"

In response, one user of Sina Weibo, a Chinese microblog similar to Twitter, wrote, "This society is seriously ill. Even cats and dogs shouldn't be treated so heartlessly."

Originally published as Passers-by ignored dying child