China coal worker kills 11 in drunken rampage with tractor

A drunken coal worker in northern China killed a customer and then went on a rampage killing 10 other people and injuring a dozen more, officials and state media said on Monday.

Li Xianliang, 38, killed the customer Sunday afternoon by driving a tractor shovel into a hut at a coal depot in Yuanshi county in the northern province of Hebei, the reports said.

Li then drove the tractor shovel on to a public road and hit several roadside shops and more than 40 vehicles, including cars, trucks, a minibus and at least one motorcycle.

Eight people died in the vehicles and three more died in a local hospital early Monday, a county government spokesman told the German Press Agency dpa.

Li had drunk strong liquor with his Sunday lunch before he argued with a customer at the Shengxing Coal Depot.

But the customer killed, as Li destroyed the hut was a different man, apparently killed by mistake, the semi?official China News Service and other media said.

Photographs carried by state media showed several crashed coal trucks, two badly damaged cars, a crushed minibus and other vehicles left in the wake of Li's rampage.

Police arrested him about an hour later after he drove the tractor into a field, reports said.

Tests showed Li?s blood alcohol level was 154 milligrams per 100 millilitres, police were quoted as saying.