TV news showed released workers with emaciated bodies and festering wounds, and China's leaders promised to punish those involved.

Many of them were forced to work in the kilns that had yet to cool down as owners tried to maximise production, leading to serious burning, Liu said.

"The black brick kiln incident is an ugly social phenomenon and an ulcer in socialist China ... we must get rid of it," Liu told a news conference in Shanxi's provincial capital, Taiyuan, that was broadcast live on state television.

Shanxi authorities announced penalties against 95 county- and township- level officials on Monday for lax supervision and dereliction of duty that allowed the brick kilns to exist.

They said investigators found no evidence of official corruption or collusion in the scandal -- which Chinese media widely alleged -- and only six government workers would be charged.

"This way, people's feeling of powerlessness always persists," the Southern Metropolis Daily said in an editorial on Tuesday.

The editorial accused authorities of excluding the media and the hundreds of parents who believed their children were cheated or trafficked to the Shanxi kilns and who first brought attention to the problem.

"Discussions about the above-mentioned larger issues (such as serious corruption) are squeezed to a certain scope and seething public anger is targeted at individual cases," the editorial said.

Of the 28 imprisoned, two were sentenced to 36 and 12 months respectively for using and beating a child labourer under 16, while a total of 16 people were tried or arrested for hiring 14 children, said Liu, the Shanxi court official.

Chinese media previously said the number of children confined in Shanxi kilns could be as many as 1,000.

1

2