At least 19 people have been killed and 47 injured after a double-decker bus overturned in Hong Kong, while 27 people died when a tourist bus plunged from a hill in Indonesia.

In Hong Kong, the accident occurred on a busy highway in the New Territories, with surviving passengers telling local media the driver had been speeding.

Police said they are investigating and arrested the driver on dangerous driving charges.

Witnesses told horrific stories of watching dazed and bloody passengers drag themselves from the mangled wreckage.

Some collapsed by the side of the road in pools of their own blood.

Rescue workers were initially foiled by the tangle of mangled metal and shattered glass, frantically attempting to cut their way into the wreck amid the agonised groans and cries of those pinned inside.

it was the Asian financial centre’s deadliest traffic accident since a 2003 bus accident that killed 21.

Emergency workers ferry bodies from the scene of the horrific Hong Kong bus crash.

Meanwhile in Java, a packed tourist bus returning from an outing collided with a motorbike and plunged off a hill after its brakes apparently failed.

Along with the 27 killed, at least 18 others were hospitalised with injuries, some in critical condition, following the crash on Saturday on a winding slope in Subang in West Java province, said local police chief Muhammad Joni.

Television footage showed police, soldiers and medical personnel evacuating the victims from the upside-down bus, which was carrying more than 40 local tourists. The bus was headed for Tangerang, a satellite city just south of the capital, Jakarta, from West Java’s Tangkuban Perahu, a popular mountainous resort.

Mr Joni said police were still investigating the cause of the accident, but a preliminary investigation showed the brakes malfunctioned while the bus was going up the hill and rolled down, hitting a motorbike before falling into a grass field.

-with AP