The parents of a missing child have admitted they abandoned him in the mountains to punish him for bad behaviour.
Yamato Tanooka, seven, was visiting the Hokkaido mountains in Japan with his mother and father when he started throwing rocks at passing cars, infuriating his parents, reported The Japan Times.
As punishment, his parents left him there, in the forest which is heavily populated with bears, but he was no longer there when they returned to collect him a short time later.
When they reported him missing, the parents said Yamato had disappeared while on a family hike but later admitted to abandoning him after he misbehaved.
More than 150 volunteers and police officers have spent the past two days searching the region for the boy.
