Beijing: Ten South Korean kindergarten pupils and two others were killed when a school bus crashed and burst into flames in a tunnel in eastern China on Tuesday, officials and reports said.
The children were aged between four and seven and lived in the city of Weihai in Shandong province where the accident happened, a South Korean consular official in the city of Qingdao said.
The Weihai propaganda department said on a microblogging website that 12 people had died and
another person was seriously injured.
Officials did not immediately give the nationality of the two others killed and the injured person.
South Korea's Yonhap news agency, citing its embassy in Beijing, said the two other fatalities were a Chinese child and the driver, while the injured person was a teacher.
The bus burst into flames in the tunnel at around 9:00 am, according to Xinhua news agency. The cause of the crash was under investigation.