Two elderly residents of Osaka Prefecture were killed Sunday evening and five people suffered various injuries in a four-vehicle collision in the prefectural city of Yao.

Masaru Shinohara, an 80-year-old company executive of Higashi-Osaka, and Haruko Abe, a self-employed, 70-year-old resident of Daito, died after their vehicle was apparently hit by a car going in the opposite direction that veered over the center line into their lane, police said.

Two other cars probably rear-ended the cars in the initial collision on Route 170, they said.

A boy aged about 9 and a man aged about 40 who were in the car that hit the vehicle carrying Shinohara and Abe suffered serious injuries, including broken ribs, while two children, aged about 1 and 5, and a man who appeared to be in his 40s sustained minor injuries, the police said.

A male employee of a "gyudon" beef bowl restaurant near the scene said he heard a loud boom when the smashup happened, adding that the road was scattered with glass and fuel apparently from the cars in the accident.

Some people were trapped in the cars and others were lying on the road, he added.

The road has two lanes in either direction. It is not clear who was driving the cars in the initial collision.