Five people were killed and dozens injured after a car ploughed into pedestrians and caught fire in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.

Chinese police said the vehicle veered off the road at the north of the square – a major tourist attraction and site of 1989 pro-democracy protests bloodily suppressed by the military – crossed the barriers and caught fire.

Three people in the car were among those who died.

The Beijing city government said on one of its official news websites that a female tourist from the Philippines and a male tourist from southern Guangdong province had also died.

Of the 38 injured, three were tourists from the Philippines and one from Japan, it added.

The car crashed almost directly in front of the main entrance of the Forbidden City, where there hangs a huge portrait of the founder of Communist China, Mao Zedong.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying refused to comment on whether the incident was a terrorist attack.

The death toll from the incident was initially three, before later climbing to five.