SHANGHAI (AFP) - Residents of central China have clashed with police, overturning cars, after a drunk police officer killed at least five people in a traffic accident, media reports and a witness said Sunday.

The police officer, Wang Yinpeng, lost control of his van and ran into two utility poles in Runan county in Henan province on Saturday afternoon, causing the deaths, the official Xinhua news agency said.

Three others were injured, Xinhua said. It made no mention of the subsequent protest.

People gathered to protest after police tried to take the bodies away, some of them smashing and flipping over three police cars and two vans, said the Southern Metropolis Daily, a newspaper known for investigative journalism.

One witness put the number of protestors in the thousands, but that figure could not be confirmed.

"People were angry that the police didn't protect the scene but tried to pull the bodies away," the witness, who declined to be named, told AFP.

She said rumours that more people had died in the accident angered the crowd, which did not disperse until early Sunday morning.

Authorities have arrested Wang, who was driving under the influence of alcohol, Xinhua quoted the local government as saying.

County police declined to comment Sunday.

This marks the second violent protest in China in less than a week.

Hundreds of people clashed with police and smashed cars in eastern China after protests over taxes turned violent on Thursday.

Several police were hurt in the riots, which began as a protest by business owners over taxes in the eastern Chinese city of Huzhou in Zhejiang province.

Mass protests are not uncommon in China as people, many left behind by the country's economic boom, take to the streets to air their grievances.