A senior government official was killed on Sunday in eastern Sri Lanka in a road mishap, police said.

Upali Dahanayake, secretary to the Ministry of Foreign Employment, and three of his family members were killed when the jeep they were traveling in veered off the road and hit a tree Sunday afternoon at Padiyathalawa, some 320 km east of the capital Colombo, police said.

In another road mishap, two people riding a motorcycle were killed in the north central district of Anuradhapura when the motorcycle crashed into a bus.

According to Sri Lanka's traffic police, about 2,000 fatal accidents occur in the island country every year mainly because of negligence, poor quality roads and overcrowded buses.

Sri Lanka, a tiny Indian Ocean island nation south of India, has a population of about 20 million.