Two serious traffic accidents on Saturday resulted in the deaths of 46 people, including one Pakistani citizen, in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, said the State Administration of Work Safety (SAWS) Monday.

In one accident, a sleeper bus bound for Kashgar from Urumqi, capital of the autonomous region, ran off a bridge, resulting in the death of 34 people, and in another, 12 peopled were killed when a tractor overturned, according to SAWS.

The causes of the two traffic accidents are still under investigation.

This August, traffic accidents have become a major killer, alarming both the public and work safety authorities.

Also on Saturday, an overloaded truck ran through the guard railing on the right side of a road in south China's Hainan Province, killing 11 people and injuring 11 others, China News Service reported Monday.

The truck was carrying five tons of shrimp and 24 passengers, all of them female.

Investigation by local traffic police revealed that a tyre failure due to overloading and inappropriate action by the driver caused the accident, said the report.

Peng Yangguang, the driver of the truck, survived the accident and was still at large, police said. An investigation is under way.

Elsewhere, rescuers in Hejiang, Sichuan Province, have finished most of their work in a ship sinking, including the search for missing passengers and payment of compensation to the families of the dead, as well as salvaging the sunken ship, reported Xinhua.

On August 2, a ferry carrying 40 passengers collided with a barge and sank in the Yangtze River in Hejiang County. A massive search recovered 20 bodies from the river, the Xinhua report said.

The local government has since mobilized more than 380 people and over 120 boats to search more than 180 kilometers of the Yangtze for the missing passengers.

With advanced DNA identification technology provided by the Sichuan Provincial Public Security Department, the identities of 14 of the bodies have been confirmed so far, sources said.

Eleven of the 15 survivors were sent to hospital for treatment and 10 have since been discharged, the sources added.

A total of 217,000 yuan (US$27,000) has been paid to families of the accident victims as preliminary compensation.

The local government has also recruited six experts to help salvage the sunken vessel; The boat has so far been moved about 60 meters closer to the river bank, said Xinhua.

In recent years, because of people's lack of safety awareness and their ignorance of traffic regulations, China has been suffering an increasingly shocking death toll from traffic accidents, with great loss of wealth.

SAWS' statistics indicate that 760,000 traffic accidents occurred last year, killing a total of 100,600 people, with a direct loss of wealth of 1.39 billion yuan (US$167 million).

To curb this shocking trend, traffic administration departments and work safety watchdogs have strengthened administration and supervision of motor vehicles, especially buses, trucks, and agricultural vehicles.

(People's Daily August 13, 2002)