More than 20 people were hospitalised in Turkey after a van carrying bee hives hit a truck, angering the bees who attacked crash victims and rescuers, the Anatolia news agency reported.

Six people were injured in the crash near the south-western Mediterranean resort of Marmaris and around 20 others, including medics and police, were hospitalised with bee stings, the agency said.

Professional beekeepers had to be called in to help evacuate the victims, some of whom had to wait for more than an hour to be extracted from among the mangled hives.

One of the six crash victims, an 18-year-old man, later died in hospital, but the cause of death was not yet clear, local governor Ahmet Altiparmak told Anatolia.

-AFP