School bus slams into bus in southern China, killing 3

[News_Editor]

School bus slams into bus in southern China, killing 3

2012-04-10 23:02:18 GMT+7 (ICT)

GUANGZHOU, CHINA (BNO NEWS) -- Three young children were killed on late Monday afternoon when a school bus slammed into a truck in southern China, officials said on Tuesday. More than a dozen others were injured and remain hospitalized.

The accident occurred on Monday at around 4 p.m. local time when a school bus from Jinlong Yucai Kindergarten crashed into a truck in Yangchun, a city located in Guangdong province of southern China. The bus was carrying 17 children, the driver and a teacher.

Yangchun city officials said two young girls died at the scene while a third girl died on early Tuesday morning. Fourteen other people remained hospitalized on Tuesday, including seven people who sustained serious injuries in the accident. Their ages were not immediately released.

Few details about Monday's accident have been released, but investigators have said the school bus was overloaded as it had a maximum capacity of 11 people. It is not clear if the overloading may have contributed to the accident.

Roads in China are known to be among the most dangerous in the world with more than 70,000 fatalities in 2009 alone. Many accidents are the result of drivers violating traffic laws, bad road conditions and overloaded vehicles.

Last month, fifteen people were killed when a passenger bus plunged into a 100-meter (328-feet) deep ravine near the Zhegu Mountain in Ngawa Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture, located in Sichuan province. Six people survived the accident and were taken to a local hospital for treatment.

And in late February, fifteen people were killed when a tourist bus plunged into a ravine along State Highway 207 in the county-level city of Gaoping, which is located in north China's Shanxi province. Nineteen people were injured, eight of them seriously, according to the Chinese government.

-- © BNO News All rights reserved 2012-04-10