{"id":204484,"date":"2025-12-28T05:41:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-28T05:41:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/204484\/"},"modified":"2025-12-28T05:41:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-28T05:41:09","slug":"massive-japan-highway-crash-kills-two-people-injures-26","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/204484\/","title":{"rendered":"Massive Japan highway crash kills two people, injures 26"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A massive crash involving 67 vehicles in snowy weather killed two people and injured 26 on an expressway in Japan late on Friday as the country kicked off its end-of-year holiday season.<\/p>\n<p>The Gunma prefectural highway police said Saturday that the pileup on the Kan-etsu Expressway started with a collision between two trucks in the town of Minakami, about 160km northwest of Tokyo.<\/p>\n<p>The initial crash blocked parts of the expressway, and cars coming from behind them were unable to brake on the snowy surface.<\/p>\n<p>A fire erupted at the far end of the pileup, spreading to 20 vehicles, some of which were completely burned. The fire was extinguished about seven hours later, police said.<\/p>\n<p><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/burnt-vehicles-are-seen-after-a-massive-crash-on-an-expressw-3RWQO5EFKRCDLJWKUC4M7K3XPY.jpg\" alt=\"Burnt vehicles are seen after a massive crash on an expressway in Minakami, northwest of Tokyo. (Source: Kyodo News via AP)\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" loading=\"eager\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"ImageMetadata__MetadataParagraph-sc-hi5x8q-0 cWTYyG image-metadata\">Burnt vehicles are seen after a massive crash on an expressway in Minakami, northwest of Tokyo. (Source: Kyodo News via AP) (Source: Supplied)<\/p>\n<p>A 77-year-old woman from Tokyo died in a passenger car, and a charred body was later recovered from the driver&#8217;s seat of a burned-out truck, police said. Out of the 26 injured, five were in serious condition, police said.<\/p>\n<p>A warning about heavy snow was in effect Friday, when many Japanese started their year-end and New Year holidays.<\/p>\n<p>Parts of the expressway remained closed for police investigation, removal and cleaning of the wreckage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A massive crash involving 67 vehicles in snowy weather killed two people and injured 26 on an expressway&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":204485,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1081,2300,42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-204484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-accident","tag-asia","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204484\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/204485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}