11 killed as Tai'an school bus plows into a group of parents, pupils

A school bus plowed into a crowd of people outside a middle school in eastern China yesterday, killing 11 parents and students, state media reported.

State broadcaster CCTV said the driver "lost control" of the vehicle as it approached the school in Shandong province's Tai'an city at 7.27am.

The bus ran into a group of parents and children on the side of the road.

"As of now, [the incident] has caused the deaths of 11 people - six parents and five students," the broadcaster reported in an update just after 11.30am.

It said one other person was in "critical" condition, while the vital signs of another 12 people were "stable."

Photos and videos circulating on social media showed people in blood-soaked clothes lying in the road near a hulking grey bus.

Several adults kneeled over unmoving children on the ground, while others could be heard screaming in the background.

"They're all dead, it's so heartbreaking," a woman's voice said off-camera in one clip of the aftermath of the crash.

"I'd have been killed too if I'd stood there, but luckily I ran away fast," she said.

The driver is being held by local police and the cause of the incident is "under investigation," CCTV said.

Many public schools in the country have just reopened this week for the new academic year.

Deadly traffic accidents occur frequently in the country due to lax safety standards and widespread disorderly driving.

In July, police said a vehicle crashed into pedestrians in the central city of Changsha, killing eight people and injuring five.

A 55-year-old suspect living in the area was detained pending an investigation, but it was unclear if the incident was intentional or not.

In 2017, a dozen people, including 11 kindergarten students, were killed when a school bus crashed and burst into flames in a tunnel in the eastern city of Weihai, also in Shandong province. The driver, six Chinese children and five South Korean children were killed. It also remains unclear whether the crash was deliberate or the result of unsafe driving.

China has also seen numerous cases of attacks on school children in recent years, often using knives or homemade explosives. Suspects were generally found to have been bearing grudges or seeking revenge.

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