China road accident kills 17

BEIJING: Seventeen people died and two others were injured in a traffic accident Wednesday in a remote part of China's Sichuan province, state media reported.

The "major" accident involved a "farm vehicle" with 19 people on board, and took place in Egu in Yajiang county at about 1:35pm (0435 GMT), the state-run Xinhua news agency reported, citing the Sichuan Provincial Work Safety Bureau.

The injured were rushed to hospital in Yajiang, the report said, without giving further details of the accident, which is now under investigation by local authorities.

The deaths follow a bus crash a week ago in which 20 people, 18 of them children, were killed when a hugely overloaded school bus collided head-on with a truck in Gansu province in northwestern China.

Some 64 children had been crammed into a nine-seater bus with its seats removed, state media said. The tragedy prompted authorities to order checks on school transport across the country, where road accidents are frequent.

Almost 70,000 pople died in road accidents in China in 2010, or about 190 fatalities a day, according to police statistics -- down from nearly 99,000 deaths on the roads in 2005.

But a World Health Organisation study challenged the 2010 numbers, saying the deaths listed by local authorities added up to almost double those figures.

The study said that road accidents had in fact increased in recent years as China's auto market has boomed. (AFP)