More than 50 people were killed in three major road accidents across China yesterday, as people returned home at the end of the week-long National Day holiday break.

Yesterday afternoon, 35 people were killed when a bus overturned after it collided with a car on an expressway in north China's port city of Tianjin, police said.

Another 18 people were injured in the accident.

The accident occurred about 4pm at the Tianjin section of an expressway linking the city's Binhai New Area with the city of Baoding in neighboring Hebei Province, said an official with Tianjin's Public Security Bureau.

The bus was registered in Hebei, while the car was registered in Shandong Province, Tianjin authorities said.

Another accident claimed 11 lives in Sheqi County in central China's Henan Province, when a truck crashed onto a minibus on a highway at around 6:30am.

Another accident claimed 11 lives in Sheqi County in central China's Henan Province, when a truck crashed onto a minibus on a highway at around 6:30am.

All 11 people killed were traveling in the minibus, police said. Most of the dead were students. The driver of the truck fled the scene but was later detained by police.

Also yesterday morning, at least six people were killed and another 19 injured in seven pileups on the expressway linking China's eastern Lianyungang City with the northwestern land port city of Huorguosi, which looks across a river to Kazakhstan.

The pileups occurred amid heavy fog on the expressway in Xiaoxian County in Anhui Province in east China at about 6:45am, Xinhua news agency reported, citing Xu Yunhuai, a traffic police official in charge of the area.

China News Service said that the pileups involved a total of 24 vehicles, including a police patrol car.

Police blamed the spate of collisions on poor visibility in the heavy fog.

Heavy fog enveloped China's northwest, southwest, northeast and central and eastern regions yesterday, including Henan and Anhui provinces, according to the national meteorological center.

China's roads are the world's deadliest, with more than 100,000 people killed each year, Xinhua reported earlier, citing a national road safety conference last year.