Beijing: Eighteen people were killed and 29 injured when a passenger bus flipped over on a mountainous road in China's Himalayan region of Tibet, a local policeman said today.

The accident occurred on Friday morning when the bus carrying 47 people flipped over in Tibet's sparsely populated Su county, a traffic policeman at nearby Naqu prefecture told AFP by phone.

"The bus should have only been carrying 37 people, but 47 people were on the bus at the time of the accident," he said, declining to identify himself. "We are still investigating this."

The State Administration of Work Safety said on its website that 18 people were killed and 28 people injured in the wreck. Seventeen of the injured were in serious condition, it said. No other details of the accident were immediately available.

China's roads are among the most dangerous in the world with more than 81,000 people killed in accidents in 2007,an average of about 223 a day, according to state press reports.

Source : PTI