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CHINA-ACCIDENT LEAD
Five dead, 19 hurt as car rams into children in China
BEIJING, Nov 22, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – A car rammed into a group of children
crossing a street in front of an elementary school in northeast China on
Thursday, killing five children and injuring 19 others, state media said.
Police took the driver into custody and are investigating the cause of
the incident in Huludao, Liaoning province, the official CCTV broadcaster
said on its Weibo social media account.
Of the nineteen that were injured, sixteen were children. Two teachers
and a passersby were also hurt, said CCTV.
Unverified videos circulating on social media appeared to show a car
veering onto the wrong side of the road and ploughing through the line of
pupils, with the impact from the crash throwing bodies across the road.
Other gut-wrenching footage showed at least two small children lying
unconscious and bleeding on the street. The screams and cries of children
could be heard in the background, as onlookers milled around the scene of the
collision.
An eyewitness quoted by Chinese media site Sina News said that he saw
“children’s shoes” and “traces of blood” on the ground near the accident.
Citing local police in Huludao city, the Chinese media report also said
that police caught the driver after he tried to flee the scene.
Victims of the crash are undergoing medical treatment, according to CCTV.
The incident happened around noon.
The ages of the victims were not released.
Police from Jianchang county in Huludao city did not immediately respond
to AFP requests for comment.
– Dangerous roads –
Grisly car accidents are common in China, where transportation
authorities have struggled to enforce safety regulations, which are often
flouted or go unenforced.
According to authorities, 58,000 people were killed in traffic accidents
across the country in 2015 alone.
Violations of traffic laws were blamed for nearly 90 percent of accidents
that caused deaths or injuries that year.
Earlier this month, at least 13 people died when a bus plunged off a
bridge in Chongqing municipality, after the driver got into a fist fight with
a passenger who had missed her bus stop.
Search and rescue teams dispatched more than 70 boats, as well as a team
of scuba divers and underwater robots, to find the wreckage and retrieve
bodies from the water.
In February, a van packed with pressurised gas tanks and petrol-filled
bottles caught fire and ploughed into pedestrians in Shanghai, leaving at
least 18 people injured.
Authorities concluded that it had been a “traffic accident”.
But a 2013 incident was blamed on militant separatists.
Two tourists were killed at the time when a car rammed into bystanders in
Beijing’s iconic Tiananmen Square before bursting into flames.
Three attackers also died in the incident, which Beijing blamed on
separatists from the restive western region of Xinjiang.
And in September, 11 people died and dozens were injured when a car
struck a crowd in a public square in the central Hunan province city of
Hengdong.
Police detained the driver, a man in his 40s, and described him as a
“vengeful repeat offender” who had daggers in his car and intended to “cause
serious damage”.
BSS/AFP/ARS/1804 hrs