(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-01-29 11:48

An inter-provincial bus is lifted after it plunged into a 40-meter-deep valley from a slippery high-way between Guiyang and Zunyi in Southwest China's Guizhou Province, January 29, 2008. At least 25 people were killed and 14 others injured in the accident. [Xinhua]

GUIYANG  -- Twenty-five people were killed after their bus veered off a slippery mountain road in the southwestern province of Guizhou on Tuesday morning, according to the local work safety authority.

The latest investigation showed that a 51-seat bus, carrying 40 people, veered off an expressway in Zunyi County, Zunyi City and plunged into a 40-meter-deep valley at about 7:40 a.m., said a spokesman with the Guizhou Provincial Work Safety Administration.

The crash also injured 14 others, two severely, the spokesman said. He said that only one person aboard the bus had no injury.

The administration earlier said that it was a 35-seat vehicle that had been carrying 38 people.

The bus, carrying mostly rural migrant workers and their relatives, was en route to Shenzhen, a booming city neighboring Hong Kong, from southwestern Municipality of Chongqing.

The work safety administration had earlier reported the starting point as Sichuan Province.

"It was horrible! I was frightened to see many people, dead or alive, lying on the ground after I heard cries for help and opened my door," said Gao Zhibin, the head of a roadside car repair shop who was first to call the police after the accident.

"I pulled out four people alive from among the bodies, including a teenage boy and a girl in her twenties. As for the other two, I couldn't tell if they were men or women," he said.

Twelve of the 14 injured people were being treated at the People's Hospital of Zunyi County. They included four children, with the youngest being a 1-year-old boy.

The other two injured were being treated at another hospital.

"Most of them are in stable condition, except for a 14-year-old boy, Li Feng, who suffered bone fractures," said Lin Xin, a doctor at the People's Hospital.

"I was sleeping when the bus capsized and I was thrown out of the window all of a sudden," said a 10-year-old girl, Shi Jing, who is from Renshou County, Sichuan Province.

She said that her mother, her aunt and she were traveling to Shenzhen to see her father who worked there.

"I miss my mother very much. But I can't find her now," the girl said in tears. She has not been told that her mother, Huang Xuehua, died in the accident.

One of the two bus drivers, Zhao Zhongbing, was also killed. The other driver, 36-year-old Mou Yong, survived with head injuries.

"If I had been driving at that time, I would have definitely died," said Mou, who was sleeping when the accident happened.

An initial investigation blamed the tragedy on the unusual snowy weather in the region in recent days. The road was covered with a thick layer of ice and the temperature was about minus two degrees Celsius, a sharp contrast to the usual warm winter climate.

Investigators are trying to determine whether road authorities should have banned traffic in such poor weather conditions.

Heavy snow since mid-January, the worst in 50 years in China's southern, central and eastern areas, has forced the closure of airports and expressways, in addition to train delays, stranding tens of thousands of passengers.

It has also affected the normal lives of people, led to power cuts, collapsed buildings, damaged crops and killed livestock.

The Ministry of Civil Affairs said on Monday that 24 people have died from the weather since January 10, and more than 77.86 million people had been affected in 14 provinces, including Guizhou, Anhui, Jiangxi, Hubei and Hunan.

The China Meteorological Administration (CMA) forecast early Tuesday that strong snow and rain would continue to hit the central, eastern and southern regions in the near future.