In addition to Saturday morning's bus accident in Hubei Province, which killed 17 and injured 38 others, three other serious traffic accidents over the weekend claimed 24 lives and injured 36.

The first, killing 10 and injuring five, took place at around 6 AM yesterday in Wushan County of Chongqing Municipality when a small tractor overturned and fell down a cliff. The cause of the accident is still under investigation.

All the injured were hospitalized and are out of danger, according to traffic police.

The second involved three vehicles that collided on an expressway in Shenzhen, a city in Guangdong Province, leaving nine people dead and 31 injured. Five of the injured are in a serious condition.

An initial investigation indicated that a bus ran into a truck at around 1 AM on Saturday after one of its tires exploded. Another truck failed to stop in time and collided with the bus.

In the third, five people in a car were killed early yesterday as their vehicle rammed into the rear of a parked truck on a freeway in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

The collision took place at around 5 AM on a freeway connecting Nanning, the regional capital, and Liuzhou in central Guangxi.

(China Daily July 18, 2005)