Three people died and five others were injured when a sleeper bus ran into a long-haul truck early on Monday in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in northwest China, local sources said.

The bus, which had 37 people aboard, was heading toward Urumqi, the Xinjiang regional capital, from Aksu, said sources from the Mongolian Autonomous Prefectural Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) of Bayingolin.

When the bus reached the 391-kilometer mark of the freeway connecting Hoxud and Korla, both situated in the southern part of the Tianshan Mountains, it slammed into the rear portion of the truck around 1:40 a.m., killing the driver and two others instantly.

Five passengers were slightly injured.

Following the crash, a joint working group consisting of personnel from the public security, work safety and medical services rushed to the site to attend to the accident.

All the injured were hospitalized.

Identities of the dead were not released.

(Xinhua News Agency, December 3, 2007)