China street accident kills 19 individuals as vacation journey rush begins | China

Nineteen individuals had been killed and 20 injured in a street site visitors accident in japanese China’s Jiangxi province on Sunday, state media reported.

The injured had been despatched to the hospital, state broadcaster CCTV reported, citing native authorities.

The accident passed off simply earlier than 1am (1700 GMT) in Nanchang County, it reported, and the trigger was “below in-depth investigation”.

Native information outlet Jimu, affiliated with the state-owned Hubei Day by day Media Group, reported the accident passed off when a truck hit a funeral procession.

Individuals had been finishing up a roadside providing to the lifeless earlier than planning to move to the crematorium on Sunday morning, an area lady surnamed Deng informed the outlet.

They had been hit by a truck, the report stated, with a lot of the lifeless and injured being funeral attenders.

One other native man, surnamed Gong, informed the outlet his spouse had been killed within the accident and that they’d been attending the funeral.

The truck had out of the blue crashed into the again of the road, tearing via the group earlier than lastly reaching the hearse, he stated.

The accident occurred as China started the 40-day interval of lunar new yr journey, wherein tens of millions of persons are anticipated to be on the transfer, and lifted Covid quarantine necessities for inbound travellers.

This lunar new yr public vacation, which formally runs from 21 January, would be the first since 2020 with out home journey restrictions.

About an hour after information of the street accident emerged, Nanchang County site visitors police issued journey tricks to drivers saying the realm was experiencing “foggy climate”.

“Driving visibility is poor, there’s low visibility, which may simply trigger site visitors accidents,” it stated.

“Please take note of fog lights … Decelerate, drive rigorously, preserve a protected distance from the automotive in entrance, keep away from pedestrians, don’t change lanes and overtake,” it added.

Highway accidents are widespread in China on account of a scarcity of strict security controls.

Final month, one individual died throughout a freeway pile-up in central China that concerned a whole bunch of automobiles and was attributable to low visibility in fog.

And in September, 27 passengers died after a bus transporting them to quarantine services in south-western Guizhou province flipped over on a motorway.

Agence France-Presse and Reuters contributed to this report