Three killed, 10 injured after lorry ploughs into bus

Heavy impact: The wreckage of the express bus, trailer lorry and tipper truck.

SEREMBAN: Three people were killed and 10 injured when a south-bound trailer lorry crashed through a guard rail at the 265.7-kilometre stretch of the North-South Expressway near here and ploughed into an express bus on the opposite lane.

During the incident at 3.20pm yesterday, the express bus driver Norzali Nordin, 56, from Malacca, passenger Rafidah Abdul Amid @ Abdul Hamid, 34, from Selangor, and the trailer lorry driver, who had yet to be identified at press time, died on the spot due to severe injuries.

Those injured were Spaniards known only as Miriam and Miguel, both 27, Bangladeshi Md Anowar, 26, Lok Eng Wui, 39, Lui Kim Yeok, 59, Chan Chee Kwang, 30, Mok Wang Quan, 18, Norsyafina Jaafar, 23, Hor Chor Ken, 51, and Lee Yun Oi, 21.

Seremban OCPD ACP Muhd Zaki Harun said preliminary investigations revealed that the trailer lorry driver had apparently lost control of his vehicle.

Both the trailer lorry and express bus then crashed into a tipper truck parked on the road shoulder of the north-bound lane.

The tipper truck was being used for work to expand the highway from three lanes to four lanes. The accident caused a traffic snarl on both sides of the highway.

Personnel from the Fire and Rescue and Civil Defence Departments and PLUS took about two hours to open all three north-bound lanes.