Officials suspended after Jiangxi school bus crash

A dozen local officials in rural eastern China have been suspended while authorities investigate the crash of an overloaded school van that killed 11 kindergarten children, state media said on Wednesday.

A deputy mayor for Guixi city, where the crash occurred on Monday, and the heads of the local education and transportation bureaus are among those suspended, the official party newspaper People’s Daily reported. The principal of the kindergarten, who also was the van’s driver, has been detained, and Xinhua news agency said the privately run school had been operating without a license and has been ordered closed.

An initial police investigation found that the van was speeding and ended up in a 3-metre-deep pond, Xinhua said, adding that the principal “drove improperly.” The principal had modified the van to carry more passengers, state broadcaster China Central Television said on its website, without citing sources.

The victims, ages 4 to 6, were mostly children of migrant workers and lived with their grandparents, Xinhua said. Many children from poor rural areas are “left behind” while their parents seek work in thriving coastal cities.

The principal, Zhou Chune, has been detained on suspicion of culpable driving causing serious injury, said an official surnamed Jiang from the Communist Party propaganda office in Guixi.

Zhou had been driving the seven-seat van with 15 children and another adult aboard along a rural road undergoing repairs in Jiangxi province, Xinhua said.