Eleven children died after a minivan carrying them to their kindergarten plunged into a pond in the eastern Chinese province of Jiangxi, state media said on Tuesday. The van was carrying 15 children and a teacher through a rural area of Jiangxi's Guixi city on Monday when it left the road and fell into the pond, which was some 3-4 metres deep.

Three children died at the scene of the accident and eight others died in hospital after emergency treatment failed to save them, the government's Xinhua news agency said. The remaining four children were in stable condition in hospital, the agency quoted a local government spokesman as saying. Police detained the driver of the minivan and were investigating the cause of the accident, it said.

Copyright Deutsche Presse-Agentur, 2012