18 Chinese preschool children killed in crash

Eighteen pre-school children and two adults were killed Wednesday in a head-on collision between an overloaded bus and a truck in north-western China.

Officials said 64 people were aboard the minibus when it crashed on its way to school in Gansu province, at 9:40am local time, the Associated Press reported. Reports show the bus was drastically overloaded, with 64 people crammed into nine seats, Reuters reported. Investigators are still unable to determine which driver was to blame for the accident.

The children were reportedly aged between 5 and 6 years old. Most of the children were from Yulinzi's Little Doctor Kindergarten, CNN reported.

An emergency official said five people had died at the scene, including the bus driver, while the other 14 had died in hospital or en route to hospital.

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The official Xinhua News Agency said the other 45 children have been hospitalized, 13 of them with serious injuries.

The incident is the latest fatal crash on Chinese roads, where drivers often ignore traffic rules, Agence France Presse reported. At least 35 people died last month when a bus collided with a car on a highway near the northern city of Tianjin. There were four other major accidents involving school buses this year, the Los Angeles Times reported.

According to Reuters, in 2010, Chinese police officially recorded 219,512 traffic accidents that led to death or injuries, including 65,225 fatalities. This was a decrease by almost four percent from 2009. However, the World Health Organization reported that in 2010 the data was seriously undercounted and they estimated it was actually double the number from the police.