Two Taiwanese tourists and a bus driver from the Chinese mainland were killed on Monday in a traffic accident in northeast China's Jilin Province.

Eighteen others, all from Taiwan, were injured in the accident.

The two tourists were both female - Lee Lin Ching-miao, 66, and Leu Hsiu-ching, 62. Li Yong, 49, was a male driver from the neighboring Heilongjiang Province, said Wei Jiuping, director of the Taiwan Affairs Office of the Korean Autonomous Prefecture of Yanbian.

Two Taiwan passengers who suffered serious injuries underwent operations and are still in critical conditions, said Wei.

The accident occurred at 9:40 a.m. on a highway of Wangqing County in Jilin while the 20-member tourist group was on its way from Jilin's neighboring province of Heilongjiang to Jilin. The bus overturned and fell into a river at the 51-km section of Laosong Highway.

Local officials rushed to the accident site to carry out rescue work and the injured are receiving medical treatment at the People's Hospital of Wangqing County.

The local government has informed all the families of the Taiwanese tourists of the accident and the family members of the two dead were expected to arrive in Wangqing on Tuesday night, said Wei.

"The local government has set up a mobile phone for the injured to talk to their families," he said.

The tourist group was on its second leg of a ten-day tour through three northeastern provinces of Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning.

(Xinhua News Agency September 12, 2006)