China bus crash outside middle school leaves 11 dead, 13 injured

HONG KONG — A bus crashed into a group of students and parents outside a school in eastern China on Tuesday, killing at least 11 people, local police said.

Thirteen others were injured when the vehicle transporting students lost control at a T-junction just before 7:30 a.m. (7:30 p.m. Monday ET) and veered into the crowd at the gate of a middle school in Tai’an, a city in the eastern province of Shandong. Six parents and five students were killed, and one of the injured was in critical condition, Dongping county police said in the statement.

Video showed bloodstained children dressed in school uniforms and other people lying on the ground and under the vehicle, which crashed into a tree near the school gate.

The driver involved has been detained by the police, and the cause of the accident is currently under investigation, the statement said.

The remaining students are continuing with scheduled classes and training, and the bus belongs to an “external company,” the school told state-run news outlet China Newsweek.

The crash was a major topic of discussion on Weibo, China’s X-like social media platform, where it had 190 million views.

“It’s so tragic, I can’t imagine the pain the parents must be feeling,” one user wrote. “The school year has just started.”

China has a history of issues with school safety, including overloaded school buses. In 2017, 11 Chinese and South Korean kindergarteners and their driver were killed in the city of Weihai, also in Shandong Province, when their bus crashed in a tunnel and burst into flames. In 2014, 27 students were killed in three separate crashes in Hunan Province, Shandong and the island province of Hainan.

There have also been a series of attacks on schoolchildren in recent years, generally involving knives or homemade explosives and suspects believed to be carrying out personal vendettas.