Sixteen bodies were found in an irrigation canal in Xianyang, Shaanxi province, in the past 20 days.

The local police said their deaths were the result of accidents rather than murder.

Xianyang police said farmers found the bodies in the city’s Qianxian county from March 30 to April 19. They said forensic autopsies had not produced any evidence suggesting the deaths had been the results of homicides, the local newspaper Huashang Daily reported.

A police officer was quoted by the newspaper as saying that the police had registered all of the bodies that were found in the canal. He also said they would try to find the dead people’s relatives and then confirm the cause of their deaths.

Besides people, local farmers also found more than 20 animal bodies, among them those of dogs and cats, in the canal. All of them were in advanced states of decay.

Zhu Larong, a farmer in the county, said his 60-year-old father, Zhu Jianjun, went out to work and fell into the canal on March 30. His family looked for him for days, to no avail.

On April 16, Zhu’s body was found in the canal.

From April 9 to 16, another three people found in the canal were identified as Huang Yueyang, a 15-year-old boy, Song Te, a 15-year-old boy, and Wang Qing, a 9-year-old girl. They are believed to have fallen into the canal when they were playing after school several days ago.

Zhang Xingming, captain of the law and order brigade under the city’s Qindu district public security branch, said police are especially concerned about the dead persons’ relatives and have established a hotline to collect clues in the case.

Some of the relatives said officials should question why so many drownings are occurring in the canal. Some also said they are planning to bring a law suit against the canal management bureau.

Yang Haiqiang, an official at the irrigation canal management bureau, said the canal, which has no guardrails, was built in the early 1970s, when the nearest villages were still quite far away. But, as the population increased and the villages became bigger, more and more of the residents there came to live near the canal. Meanwhile, the canal’s bridges, many of which were built about 40 years ago, were too narrow to carry frequent traffic, a situation that led to more drownings.

“The length of the main canals in this irrigation project is 412 km and more than 200 million yuan ($31.7 million) is needed to build guardrails along the canal,” the official said. “We will try hard to get the money needed for guardrail construction.”

Police said the canal’s water had flown fast during the spring and that farmers should pay attention to safety when they work on their farms. The family of someone who has disappeared should tell police of that situation as soon as possible.