A truck slammed into a row of visitors on the street outside a crematorium in southeastern China, killing 19 people. Another 20 were injured, the official Chinese news agency Xinhua reported on Sunday. The accident happened shortly after midnight in Taoling village, southeast of Nanchang city in Jiangxi province.
Because of the large crowds at the crematorium, relatives and friends waited outside and set up offerings for the dead by the side of the road, residents told state officials. They would have liked to be present at the cremation the next morning. The cause of the accident is under investigation, police said. Many of the dead were from the village of Taoling.
It was not mentioned whether the cremation facility, like so many others in China’s current massive corona wave, was overloaded with the high number of Covid 19 victims. State media have been reporting for weeks about long waiting times, traffic jams and queues for crematoriums because the large number of bodies cannot be cremated fast enough. (SDA/AFP/chs)