The owner of a Cairo nursery and two nursery employees were arrested on Friday on charges of negligence after a toddler drowned in the nursery's pool, judicial sources said.

The two-year-old boy drowned a day earlier in the pool of the privately-owned nursery in Cairo's upscale Maadi district.

The prosecutor-general ordered that the trio be detained for four days for questioning. A statement from the prosecutor's office said that investigations showed the incident resulted from "gross negligence," and lack of proper care on the part of the nursery's owner, manager and care assistant.

The child was at the swimming pool without any supervision or care when he jumped in, the statement said. The nursery staff were unaware of his whereabouts until they launched a search and found the child's body.

Investigations also showed the nursery was operating without a licence.

This is not the first death at Egypt's schools and university in the past few months.

In February, an 11-year-old boy died in Beheira, north of Cairo, when a tree fell on him in the school yard.

In March, a female German University in Cairo student died on campus when she was hit by a university bus.