BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) — A Romanian government institute has asked prosecutors to investigate the deaths of 340 children at a communist-era orphanage.

The Institute for Investigating the Crimes of Communism said Monday the deaths occurred from 1980-1989 at "the Horror Orphanage," the nickname local residents gave a facility for children with chronic neurological disorders in the northern town of Siret.

A total of 8,586 children were admitted there from 1956 until the facility closed in 2001. There were 1,500 deaths during that period, but the institute only reviewed ones from the 1980s.

The institute wants prosecutors to see if poor care contributed to the deaths.

After Romanian leader Nicolae Ceausescu was executed, television stations broadcast images of thousands of Romanian children who had been abandoned in orphanages, often in squalid conditions.