At least 52 people, mostly young schoolgirls, were killed when their bus collided with a truck and a minivan in Indonesia's East Java, a senior police officer said on Thursday.

The bus was carrying the schoolgirls from Bali to Yogyakarta when the accident occurred in Situbondo regency, some 515 miles east of the capital Jakarta, late on Wednesday night.

"There are 52 victims so far. They are the passengers of the bus and were burned to death as a result of the crash," said Situbondo Police Chief Tugas Dwi Apriyanto.

He said bodies, mostly of girls from a Yogyakarta high school, had been removed from the wreckage and an unknown number of injured taken to nearby hospitals.

The driver and his assistant survived the crash, although they were badly injured, he said. The fate of those in the other vehicles involved in the crash was not known.

(China Daily October 9, 2003)