Eleven schoolchildren and their driver were killed in eastern China on Tuesday after their bus crashed in a tunnel and burst into flames, an accident that highlighted persistent road safety problems.
The crash occurred in Weihai, a city in Shandong Province. The city government said that the bus had been rented by the Zhongshi International School, which is attended by many Koreans in the area. The bus was on its way to the school when the accident happened.
A teacher was also severely injured, the city government said, and the circumstances of the crash were being investigated.
An employee at the South Korean Consulate in Qingdao, a major port city in Shandong, who declined to give her name, said that the children were ages 3 to 7.
The nationalities of the children were unclear. The South Korean Embassy in Beijing said that of the 11 who died, 10 were South Korean and one was Chinese. But the city government in Weihai said that five of the pupils were South Korean and six Chinese.