Seventeen people were killed and 30 others injured Tuesday after a man set a bus on fire in China's northern region of Ningxia over what authorities have deemed a "financial dispute."
The man entered the bus with two buckets of gasoline and ignited them with a lighter before jumping out a window on the bus driver's side to avoid the impending blaze, according to ABC News.
Several moments later, at around 7 a.m., the fire broke out, engulfing the bus in front of a furniture store, trapping many of the passengers inside. Firefighters quickly arrived on the scene to put out the blaze, but not before 17 people inside were burned alive.
Officials initially reported that 14 people died in the blaze but increased the death toll to 17 after a second search of the bus yielded the discovery of three more victims, according to the BBC.
In the meantime, police launched a manhunt for the suspect, later identified as 33-year-old Ma Yongping, eventually capturing him after a four-hour standoff at a construction site in Yinchuan, the capital of the Ningxia region. Authorities report that Ma threatened to kill himself during the confrontation.
Bus fires are not uncommon in China, which are generally blamed on safety standards, people with personal vendettas or the mentally unstable, according to The Guardian.
In 2013, a bus fire that killed 47 people in the coastal city of Xiamen was blamed on a suicidal man.
Last year, a 35-year-old man was executed for a 2014 bus fire in Hangzhou that injured 33 people. A court determined that the culprit, Bao Laixu, started the fire because he wanted revenge against society and to commit suicide following a tuberculosis relapse.
