HANGZHOU - Forty-two kindergarteners in Zhejiang province have been sickened in an alleged case of food poisoning, local authorities said Friday.

Students at a kindergarten in the Xiaoshan district of the provincial capital of Hangzhou began to vomit and complain of abdominal pain around 1:30 pm Friday, according to officials from the district's Communist Party of China (CPC) committee.

The children were rushed to local hospitals, where their vital signs were found to be stable, the officials said.

"From the children's symptoms, we believe it is probably a case of food poisoning," said Shao Jiwei, vice president of Xiaoshan No 2 People's Hospital.

The kindergarten is unlicensed and unnamed. Most of its students are the children of migrant workers.

Ying Jinfeng, the mother of a sickened five-year-old, said that she found the kindergarten cordoned off by police when she came to pick up her child Friday afternoon.

"Both my husband and I have to work 12 hours a day, even on weekends, so we don't have time to take care of our child," Ying said.

The cause of the incident is unknown, pending further investigation.