Three out of the 22 injured people have been in critical condition, following a bus-truck crash which killed 19 on Saturday in southwest China's Yunnan Province, local authorities said Sunday.

Currently, 22 injured people are being treated in hospital, of whom three remain in critical condition, said a spokesman for the government of the Chuxiong Yi Autonomous Prefecture.

A medical expert team was established to rescue the injured.

A truck that carried watermelon bumped into the back of a domestic tourist bus on an expressway in Chuxiong at about 6:40 a.m., and both fell off the road.

Fourteen people on the bus and two on the truck were killed instantly and two more bus passengers died en route to hospital. One died in hospital.

The accident led to a traffic congestion on the expressway that links Kunming with Chuxiong. The traffic returned to normal late afternoon.

Tourists on board the bus were mainly from Beijing, Shanxi and Hunan provinces, a traffic police officer told Xinhua.

(Xinhua News Agency April 26, 2009)