BRIARCLIFF MANOR, N.Y. – A family’s minivan going in the wrong direction crashed into two cars on a suburban parkway on Sunday, killing eight people, including four young cousins and the mother of one of them.

State police Investigator Joseph Becerra said the minivan was traveling southbound in the northbound lanes of the Taconic State Parkway in Westchester County, just north of New York City, when it struck an SUV and then careened into a third vehicle. The minivan rolled down an embankment, where it burst into flames.

Fire spread from under the minivan, throughout its shell, within minutes.

The woman driving the minivan and four of the five children inside it were killed, Becerra said. They were part of a family from Long Island.

The children who died were girls ages 2, 5, 7 and 9. The fifth child, a boy, age 5, was hospitalized.

The minivan’s 36-year-old driver was the mother of the surviving child, and the other children were her nieces and her daughter, Becerra said.

Three men from Yonkers in the SUV were killed, Becerra said. Two people in the other vehicle hit by the minivan were hospitalized.

The afternoon accident was the second wrong-way crash on the parkway on Sunday, and police said they didn’t know why either driver was going in the wrong direction or where the drivers entered the parkway. Five people were injured in an early morning collision between two vehicles, one of which was headed northbound in the southbound lanes.

That accident occurred about 20 miles north of the later incident.