Residents of central China have clashed with police, overturning cars, after a drunk police officer killed at least five people in a traffic accident, media reports and a witness said Sunday.

The police officer, Wang Yinpeng, lost control of his van and ran into two utility poles in Runan county in Henan province on Saturday afternoon, causing the deaths, the official Xinhua news agency said.

Three others were injured, Xinhua said. It made no mention of the subsequent protest.

People gathered to protest after police tried to take the bodies away, some of them smashing and flipping over three police cars and two vans, said the Southern Metropolis Daily, a newspaper known for investigative journalism.

One witness put the number of protestors in the thousands, but that figure could not be confirmed.

"People were angry that the police didn't protect the scene but tried to pull the bodies away," the witness, who declined to be named, told AFP.

She said rumours that more people had died in the accident angered the crowd, which did not disperse until early Sunday morning.

Authorities have arrested Wang, who was driving under the influence of alcohol, Xinhua quoted the local government as saying.

County police declined to comment Sunday.

This marks the second violent protest in China in less than a week.

Hundreds of people clashed with police and smashed cars in eastern China after protests over taxes turned violent on Thursday.

Several police were hurt in the riots, which began as a protest by business owners over taxes in the eastern Chinese city of Huzhou in Zhejiang province.

Mass protests are not uncommon in China as people, many left behind by the country's economic boom, take to the streets to air their grievances.

Truck overturns in China killing 24 rail workers
Beijing (AFP) Oct 29, 2011 - At least 24 railway workers were killed when a truck transporting them to work overturned Saturday in northwest China, state media reported.

Four others were also injured in the accident that occurred as the workers were being taken in a light truck to a railway construction site in Lintao county, Gansu province, Xinhua news agency said.

There were 27 passengers and a driver in the truck when it overturned in a mountain tunnel, the report said, adding that the vehicle was designed to carry construction material and two people.

Xinhua initially reported 21 dead in the incident, but three other workers succumbed to their injuries after being taken to hospital, the agency said later.

A preliminary investigation determined that brake failure was the cause of the accident, it said.

Earlier this month, China's railways ministry ordered delays to ongoing rail projects following a deadly high-speed accident between two bullet trains in July that left at least 40 people dead and nearly 200 injured.

According to Xinhua, the railway workers killed Saturday were working at a site on the Lanzhou-Chongqing line, but the report did not say if the line was a high speed railway.

China has developed its vast transport network at breakneck speed, building the world's largest high-speed rail system from scratch in less than a decade.

But the government has been accused of overlooking safety in its rush to develop, most notably after the July high-speed rail crash near the eastern city of Wenzhou and a metro collision in Shanghai in September that injured nearly 300.

In the weeks following the July crash, the government announced a halt to new train projects.

In February, rail minister Liu Zhijun, who had pushed forward the building of the high-speed rail system, was sacked and placed under investigation for graft, state press reports said.