The Philippines promised yesterday to investigate an apparent suicide by an11-year-old girl due to poverty after the incident generated angry public reactions and street protests.

Before Marianeth Amper hanged herself with a nylon cord last week in Davao City on the southern island of Mindanao, she wrote a letter to a television network asking for a new pair of shoes, a bag, a bicycle and better paying jobs for her parents, local newspapers said. She also left a diary narrating her family?s difficulties in sending her and a younger brother to school and how she wished her father?s health would improve and get him a good job other than doing small carpentry work. The story of her death was published in newspapers yesterday, stirring outrage among many. A comment by a government official that it was ?an isolated case? set off street protests.

?One death is too much,? said the Global Call to Action against Poverty, a non-government organisation helping fight poverty in the Philippines.

?We were shocked and saddened by the news of the suicide of 11 year-old girl, and for a few hours our world stopped. To hear the government reducing her death to an isolated case is outrageous.?

Esperanza Cabral, social welfare and development secretary, said she had ordered an inquiry.