A bus flipped over and burst into flames after it was rear-ended by a cargo truck in south China on Monday, killing at least 26 people and injuring 31, state media said, according to AP. The official Xinhua News Agency said in a brief online report that the accident occurred at 3:50 a.m. Monday on a stretch of the Suizhou-Yueyang expressway that cuts through Hubei province. It said people aboard both vehicles were hurt or killed and the number of the injured was likely to rise. The long-distance coach bus was headed to Tianmen in Guangdong province, Xinhua said, but it didn't say where it originated or give any details about the passengers. China Central Television broadcast footage of the accident site, showing where the two vehicles tore up a stretch of guard railing before plunging down an embankment into a farm field. A mass of charred and mangled metal was surrounded by hundreds of large blackened wax gourds that had been piled on the cargo truck. Serious traffic accidents are common in China due to lax driving habits, overloaded vehicles and bad road conditions.
