China arrests two men over internet rapes and murders

Two men have been arrested in eastern China on suspicion of raping and murdering at least six girls and teenage women after arranging dates with them over the Internet, a police spokeswoman said today.

Li Song, 26, who used the online name Mengxia - Early Summer - allegedly lured his last victim with an offer to take her out for hamburgers, said the police spokeswoman in Kaifeng, a city in central China. The official gave only her surname, Niu.

The parents of the girl, a first-year high school student whose name was not released, told police she didn’t come home on time on May 15, according to reports in the Beijing Morning Post and other state-run newspapers.

They told police that she frequently used Internet cafes near her school to cruise Internet chat rooms using the name Qiao Baobei, which translates to Chic Girl.

Li was arrested May 17 after police posing as potential dates arranged over the Internet to meet him for a fishing excursion, the reports said.

Li identified Xu Yuanqing, 24, as his accomplice, and police arrested the second man in eastern Shandong province, where he had fled, the reports added.

The bodies of six victims were exhumed from under a building materials shop that Li managed, as well as a suburban home that the two used for their liaisons and under a tree in the house’s garden, the reports said.

The victims were believed to be between the ages of 12 and 17, although none of the bodies have been positively identified, they said.

A picture accompanying the reports showed a crowd of onlookers standing over an excavated pit, some holding handkerchiefs to their noses.

Niu said the reports were correct, but that her superiors ordered her not to fax a police news release on the case to any foreign news agencies. She said police were using DNA analysis to identify the bodies, but that results would not be ready for some time.

‘‘The cruel case astonished the entire city of Kaifeng,’’ the English-language China Daily said. Use of the Internet to chat with other computer users has grown popular in China, especially among teenagers, the paper said.

Internet use in China has exploded in recent years, with some 30 million Chinese now logging on regularly, according to the government.