10 dead as truck ploughs through crowded Chinese market
- Initial investigation suggests that vehicle’s brakes failed on downhill road
Ten people were killed and 16 injured when a truck ploughed through a busy market area in central China on Sunday morning, authorities said.
The vehicle went out of control on a downhill section of road at around 8.50am in the township of Huashi in Xiangtan county, Hunan province, the county government said in a statement on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like microblogging service.
Police detained the driver and an investigation was under way, the statement said.
Footage posted on social media platform WeChat showed about 10 people lying in pools of blood in the middle of the road near the sand-laden truck.
An initial investigation suggested that the vehicle drove into pedestrians as “its brakes failed”, video platform Litchi News quoted a police officer as saying.
The incident comes just three months after six people were injured when a large truck crashed into a market in Yangping township, Hebei province. The driver lost control of the vehicle as he experienced an epileptic seizure, The Beijing News reported.
