SHENYANG, May 23 (Xinhua) -- At least 32 people are dead after a coach and truck collided early Sunday on an expressway in Fuxin City, northeast China's Liaoning Province.
A spokesman with the Liaoning Public Security Bureau said the accident happened at 3 a.m. when the truck, with an Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region registration plate, turned the wrong way when coming out of a service area.
The two vehicles collided head on and were instantly on fire.
Three people on the truck and 28 on the bus died at the scene, the spokesman said.
Zhang Zhijing, deputy director of the Zhangwu County People's Hospital, said the hospital had received 25 injured people from the accident. One of four severely injured people later died in hospital.
The coach, with a Tianjin Municipality registration plate, had 53 people on board. It was en route from Tianjin to Harbin, capital of the northeastern Heilongjiang Province.
Maintenance work was being carried out on the section of the four-lane expressway linking Tieling and Chaoyang cities in Liaoning where the accident happened, according to the local transport authority.
The expressway was cleared and traffic has been resumed.
Zhang from the local hospital said the patients were in stable conditions, and three people, due to lack of proper equipment in Zhangwu County People's Hospital, were being transferred to provincial capital Shenyang and Fuxin city for better treatment.
Zhang Xueliang, a survivor being treated in the hospital, said, "we were all sleeping when the accident happened."
People managed to crawl out of the bus after the collision, and "a fire broke out not long after I left."
Another injured Li Shucai said people called emergency numbers when they got out of the bus. Ambulances, firefighters, and police cars soon arrived but there were still a lot who failed to escape the fire.
All recovered bodies were sent to the funeral house in Zhangwu county, said the spokesman with the Liaoning Public Security Bureau.
But identities of the victims were hard to confirm, as the fire had burned the ID cards or other identity information of the dead, said the spokesman.
DNA tests may be required to identify the victims, he said.
The only two victims who could be identified were the drivers of the two vehicles, the spokesman said.
