Two bus-truck collisions at the weekend killed 14 people and injured 26 in Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region and Shaanxi Province, further to the at least 11 dead and 12 injured after Saturday's bus accident in Shanxi Province.

Nine were killed and another one seriously injured when a minibus hit a heavy-duty dump truck head-on in Ningxia.

Local police said the accident happened on regional highway No.101 in Liwang Township, Haiyuan County, at around 5 PM on Saturday.

All the casualties were from the minibus, including its driver, and were killed on the spot.

Another passenger was injured and sent to a local hospital. The victims were all from Wuwan Village of Zhengqi Township in Haiyuan.

The accident caused traffic congestion that lasted for seven hours, and the truck driver has been detained by local police.

On Sunday, five people were killed and 25 injured in Luochuan County, Shaanxi when a truck loaded with coal collided head-on with a tourist bus.

The county government said a truck registered in Henan Province collided with a Xi'an Tourist Group bus in Yongxiang Township of Luochuan on national highway No.210 at 2:35 PM.

The bus passengers were mostly holidaying workers from a company in Xiangtan City, Hunan Province.

One person was killed on the spot, four died later in hospital and 25 others were injured. Most of the casualties were from the bus.

All the injured were hospitalized in Luochuan.

The causes of the both accidents are under investigation.

(Xinhua News Agency August 29, 2005)