Two hospital staff have been detained by police after at least 21 fetuses and baby bodies were found dumped in a river in east China's Jining City, local government officials said Tuesday.

Eight of the 21 bodies had tabs with clinic code numbers attached to their feet. The tabs showed the bodies were from the Affiliated Hospital of Jining Medical University.

The bodies were recovered by local residents and firemen Monday after they were discovered under a bridge spanning the Guangfu River on the outskirts of Jining.

The Beijing News reported Tuesday the bodies may have been dumped after abortions and induced labor. Such bodies are treated as "medical waste" by hospitals.

Mortuary workers Zhu Zhenyu and Wang Zhijun had been sacked by the hospital and detained by police, Gong Zhenhua, a city government spokesman, told a news conference late Tuesday.

"Investigations by police and health authorities show that Zhu and Wang had reached verbal agreements privately with relatives of the dead babies to dispose the bodies and charged fees," Gong said.

"They subsequently transported the bodies secretly to the Guangfu River, but they had failed to bury the bodies completely," he said.

Two senior officials, Li Luning and He Xin, director and deputy director of the hospital's Logistics Department, were removed from their posts, and a vice president of the hospital, Niu Haifeng, was suspended from his post, Gong said.

Meanwhile, the Jining Municipal Health Bureau was ordered by the government to offer a public apology for ineffective supervision, he said.

"The incident happened because hospital staff violated regulations and carried out improper treatment of baby bodies," he said.

"It exposes a serious loophole in the hospital's management and indicates a lack of ethics and legal awareness of some hospital staff," he said. "It exerts a very negative impact on society and teaches us a profound lesson."

Gong said the city government had ordered health authorities to immediately launch a general overhaul of body treatment at all local hospitals.

The 21 baby bodies had been cremated, he said.

The municipal environmental department had earlier said the most recent tests on the river's water quality showed it was not contaminated with major water indicators unchanged from those last year.

The river is not a drinking water source for the city.