Tokyo, Dec. 27 -- Amid heavy snowfall, a large-scale pileup involving more than 50 vehicles on an expressway in Japan's Gunma Prefecture has left at least two people dead and 26 others injured, Kyodo News reported.

The incident occurred on Friday evening, around 7:30 pm (local time) on the outbound carriageway of the Kan-etsu Expressway in Minakami, northwest of Tokyo.

Police said snowy conditions turned the road surface icy, causing several vehicles to skid out of control. This led to a chain-reaction crash spanning roughly 300 metres, according to Kyodo News.

Officials said the accident was triggered when a truck slammed into another truck that had stopped following an earlier single-vehicle crash.

The impact escalated rapidly, invo...