HONG KONG – A bus crashed into a crowd of students and parents outside a school in eastern China on Tuesday morning, killing 11 people and injuring 13 others, according to police and state media.

The students were waiting to enter the gate of a middle school in Tai’an city in Shandong province when the bus slammed into them after 7 a.m., state news agency Xinhua reported. The bus, specially customized for transporting students, “lost control” when it drove into an intersection, the public security bureau in Dongping county said in a statement.

Five students and six parents were killed, it said. One of the injured was in critical condition while the others were stable, according to police. The bus driver has been placed in police custody and the cause of the accident is being investigated, the statement said. China has faced a spate of car-ramming and stabbing attacks targeting schoolchildren in recent years, as well as deadly road traffic accidents involving school buses.

In March, a car careened into a group of pupils in Dezhou, another city in Shandong, killing two people and leaving six others severely injured, state media reported at the time. Later in the month, a bus carrying students collided with a dump truck in the city of Nantong in the eastern province of Jiangsu, killing one person and injuring eight others. Last year, six people were killed and one injured in an early morning stabbing incident outside a kindergarten in southern Guangdong province. And a 2022 stabbing, also at a kindergarten, killed three and injured six in eastern Jiangxi province. (CNN) …[+]