A 21-year-old girl uttered her last words to her mother over the phone while being crushed to death by a shipping container in a five-vehicle collision at a Penang intersection, reported Singapore's Channel News Asia.

"Mummy, it hurts so much!" Lee Zi Rou had cried into her phone, as her mother recalled her last words in an interview with Chinese-language daily China Press on Thursday November 14.

Her mother - identified as 42-year-old Ms Lim - frantically asked her daughter about her whereabouts but was met with silence.

"I sensed she had died," Ms Lim said at her daughter's wake, as quoted by the Malaysian Star. "She called at 9.24am but my daughter died by 9.30am."

She died after the car she was driving was crushed by a container at a traffic light junction at Jalan Bukit Tengah.

The container from a trailer had toppled onto her car when the driver had allegedly lost control of his vehicle when attempting a sharp left turn.

The accident also left a 25-year-old man seriously injured but rescued and taken to the hospital by passers-by.