The mayor of Shijiazhuang, the capital of northern China's Hebei Province, was sacked Thursday over a tainted milk powder scandal, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

Ji Chuntang was dismissed at the local legislature a day after being removed from his post as vice secretary of the Shijiazhuang Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China, the Chinese news agency said.

It said that the Shijiazhuang-based dairy giant Sanlu Group was the first company exposed in the crisis, in which at least three infants have died among more than 6,200 across the country who developed kidney stones after drinking Sanlu's tainted baby formula.