The death toll from a Saturday's bus-truck collision in Zhijiang City, central China's Hubei Province rose to 12 and identities of the dead have all been confirmed, local police sources said Monday.

Most of the dead were residents from Wanzhou District of neighboring Chongqing City. So far, relatives of nine of them have arrived in Zhijiang, said the sources.

Early on Saturday, a bus registered in east China's Fujian Province with 53 people aboard left Wanzhou for Fujian.

The accident happened around 6:23 a.m. when the bus smashed into the rear part of a truck on a section of a freeway linking Wuhan, the provincial capital, with Yichang City, also in Hubei Province. The accident killed 12 people, including the bus driver, and injured 41 others.

All the injured are hospitalized.

Specialists from the Chinese Ministry of Public Security and Wuhan University of Technology arrived in Zhijiang on Sunday night to investigate the cause of the accident.

(Xinhua News Agency March 27, 2006)