BEIJING — As the annual Lunar New Year travel rush began early on Sunday, a traffic collision in southern China left at least 19 people dead and 20 others wounded, according to police.
The local traffic management brigade in Jiangxi province claims that the collision happened outside of Nanchang. The brigade stated that the reason was being looked into.
Given that the Chinese dictatorship habitually censors or falsifies information, the true number of deaths from such incidents might be significantly higher.
At the time of the accident, shortly after midnight, there were reports of heavy fog as well.
According to a local, who was quoted by the website Jimu News, the victims were Taoling village mourners who had set up a funeral tent on the side of the road, as is typical in rural China, and were struck by a passing truck as they were getting ready to go to the neighborhood crematorium in the morning.
The lady, who would only provide her last name, Deng, told the website, which is run by the Hubei Daily newspaper with its headquarters in a nearby province, that some of the dead were her neighbors.
According to Jimu, another unnamed villager confirmed that account of what happened and said that the area had already been cleared up. The injured person's condition wasn't known.
Since most COVID-19 limitations have been lifted, it is anticipated that the number of such journeys would more than quadruple this year to more than 2 billion over the weeklong festival season, which begins on January 22.
