Three Hong Kong tourists were killed by a runaway tour bus in a car park near the Great Wall yesterday as the teenage daughter of one victim looked on in horror.
The two women and a man were crushed under the bus on the third day of a five-day sightseeing tour of the capital as they walked to a restaurant for lunch before visiting the Great Wall.
Twenty-one other members of the Hong Thai Travel Services tour group escaped injury when the empty 52-seat bus rolled 50 metres down a slope and trapped the victims. A tour guide and a mainland restaurant worker were also hit but were not seriously hurt.
Hong Thai director and general manager Jason Wong Chun-tat said the vehicle hit them near the Juyongguan section of the Great Wall, 50 kilometres from Beijing, at 1pm.
'I think they were not aware the coach was coming because it came from a blind spot behind them,' Wong said.
The dead tourists, all Hong Kong residents, were a 37-year-old woman, her 40-year-old male partner and a 43-year-old woman.