An explosion killed at least 29 people early on Thursday when a passenger bus hit a truck carrying more than six tonnes of explosives in the eastern Chinese province of Jiangxi, local police said.
The double-decker bus collided with the truck, causing the explosives to detonate, as the bus driver was trying to overtake it at 4am local time on an expressway near Jiangxi’s Shangrao city, a police official said by telephone.
Police recovered the bodies of 29 people, including the truck driver. The blast also injured seven people who were outside the bus, the official said.
The force of the blast was so strong that it damaged nearby houses, the state-run Xinhua news agency said.
The truck was registered in Liuyang, a major firecracker-producing city in central China, the agency said.
The bus was travelling overnight from the southern city of Shenzhen to the eastern province of Zhejiang.
Police were initially unsure of the exact death toll because of the devastation caused by the huge explosion, the agency said.
Authorities are still investigating the cause of the explosion but believe the bus driver may have been at fault, it said. — Sapa-DPA