Twenty people, 18 of them children, were killed in a head-on collision between a hugely overloaded school bus and a truck in northwestern China Wednesday, local authorities and state media said. The small nine-seater bus, from a local kindergarten, was carrying 64 people when the accident happened on Wednesday morning in Gansu province, the official Xinhua news agency said, citing local authorities. Children are often crammed into buses for their journeys to school in China, especially in rural areas, despite strict regulations on such practices.
In September Chinese police reportedly charged the driver of a school minibus with “seriously overloading” his vehicle after it was stopped with 64 children on board. The bus was built to carry eight passengers and most of the seats had been removed to cram many times that number of people on board, Chinese state media said.
Two adults — reportedly a driver and a teacher — were among those killed in Wednesday’s crash, an official surnamed Du from the Gansu safety bureau told AFP. Another 44 people were injured, with 12 in a serious condition, China Central Television said. Earlier reports had said 19 people died in the accident.
