BEIJING: An overloaded minivan collided with a truck in central China on Thursday (May 28), killing 13 people and injuring three, traffic police said.

The van, which had a maximum capacity of nine passengers but was carrying 16, hit the rear of the truck while on an expressway in Henan province at 2.40am, the traffic management bureau of China’s Ministry of Public Security said on social media.

It was driving on the G40 expressway in the city of Nanyang when it “rear-ended a semi-trailer truck travelling ahead of it”, the bureau said on the Weibo social media platform.

The ministry said it “attached great importance” to the incident, “immediately dispatching a working group to Nanyang led by a traffic management bureau official to direct investigation”.

In November last year, a train ran into a group of railway workers, killing 11 and injuring two in China’s southwestern city of Kunming, the deadliest rail accident in more than a decade.

In June that year, one person died and four others were injured in Chongqing when a driver allegedly drove into a crowd, after onlookers reportedly criticised him for repeatedly sounding the horn on his car.