At least 17 passengers were killed with more than five others injured on Tuesday night when a bus caught fire, blew up and burned along the Jiangpu section of an expressway from East China's Anhui Province to Zhejiang Province.

Firefighters inspect the wreckage of a bus on which a fire and blast occured in Jiangpu, Nanjing, East China's Jiangsu Province February 22, 2005. At least 10 passengers were killed, with 17 others wounded. The cause of the accident was still under investigation. [newsphoto]

Authorities said 44 passengers were aboard the bus when the incident took place at 9:44 pm on Tuesday. Only 17 people were reported safe, with the rest injured or killed. All the dead were instantly killed, a local reporter interviewed at the site said, Xinhua reported.

"Passengers escaped from the burning bus by jumping out of the front and the back doors, while police and firefighters rushed to the spot," he said.

Passengers, all from a town of Lu'an County in East China's Anhui Province, took the bus heading for Jiaxing in Zhejiang Province, to seek jobs after the Spring Festival.

A young man at his 20s was pushed out of a window of the bus by his mother. The woman was found to have died inside the vehicle.

The bus was under repair before the day it travelled on the road, a passenger whose name cannot be verified said. All the injured have been sent to a hospital nearby. The cause of the incident is still under investigation, according to the Nanjing Morning Post.