Eleven people were killed and 51 injured when an overloaded bus rolled off an icy road in eastern Anhui province late Sunday near Mingguang city, Xinhua news agency said.

It said the passengers were mostly migrant workers returning home to celebrate the Spring Festival on February 7, China's most important holiday.

The driver of the bus has been arrested for carrying 72 passengers, 21 more than allowed, it said.

In adjacent Hubei province in central China, more than 1,000 kilometres (620 miles) of highways were shut down in recent days because of the biggest snow fall in the region in 16 years, the Beijing Times newspaper said.

More than 8,800 of 9,500 long-distance buses scheduled since Saturday have been delayed by the bad weather, stranding up to 300,000 passengers, the report said.

At least 10 people have died due to weather-related incidents in Hubei over the last several days, it added, most of them traffic-related.

Large parts of both Hubei and Anhui provinces were covered with with up to 30 centimetres (12 inches) of snow, which also fell in the northern provinces of Shaanxi, Shanxi, and Hebei, it said.

China is expecting more than 2.2 billion trips will be made by either rail, air or bus during the Lunar New Year travel period that extends from January 19 to March 2, state press reported.

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