Six Chinese children playing hide and seek suffocated after locking themselves in a wooden chest used to store grain, the Beijing Youth Daily reported on Monday.

The four boys and two girls, aged two to nine, were unconscious when they were found and rushed to hospital from their home in Fujiang village in Xi'an, famous for its terracotta warriors, in northern Shaanxi province, the newspaper said.

They never regained consciousness. A seventh child, 10-year-old Li Cong, survived the August 15 ordeal, the newspaper said.

"I don't know how the chest was locked," Li was quoted as saying.

The chest, 1.3 metres long, one metre wide and two metres high, could not be opened from the inside. In China, it is common for peasants to store grain in wooden chests.

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