Cambodia Investigates After Stampede Leaves 347 Dead

By Daniel Ten Kate

Nov. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Cambodia has set up an inquiry to determine the cause of a stampede on a bridge last night that killed at least 347 people during an annual water festival which draws more than a million rural residents to the capital.

“We never had this kind of tragedy before,” government spokesman Khieu Kanharith said by phone from Phnom Penh. “We call for all eyewitnesses and people who were wounded to testify about what happened.”

The government today worked to identify bodies at four main hospitals as the army prepared to transport victims, most of which were women, back to their villages, Khieu Kanharith said. Authorities hurried to prepare coffins because they had only 60 on hand in the capital, he said.

The victims were mostly young people from provincial areas who had crossed the bridge to see exhibitions and concerts on Koh Pich island, Khieu Kanharith said. One theory is that a young boy tried to scare some girls by telling them the bridge was collapsing, triggering the stampede, he said.

“Because it was a suspension bridge, many people from the provinces didn’t understand that everything was normal,” he said. The government wouldn’t jump to any conclusions, he added.

Many victims died from suffocation and electrocution, the Phnom Penh Post reported, citing a doctor at Calmette Hospital who declined to be identified. Military police fired water cannons into the crowd after the initial stampede, giving people electric shocks from the cables lighting the bridge, the newspaper said, citing 21-year-old Ouk Sokhhoeun, an eyewitness.

‘Crushed to Death’

“Some people were crushed to death under four or five layers of people during the stampede,” Esther Halim, country director for aid group World Vision, said in a statement. “The scale of this tragedy has overwhelmed the government hospitals.”

Hundreds jumped off the bridge during the panic as emergency vehicles rushed to the scene, the Post reported. Shoes, shirts, pants and bodies littered the bridge after the crowd cleared, it said.

“There were too many people on the bridge and both ends were pushing towards the centre,” Sean Ngu, an Australian who witnessed the tragedy, told the BBC. “The pushing caused those in the middle to fall to the ground and then get crushed.”

The three-day water festival celebrates the period when the Tonle Sap River reverses direction at the end of the rainy season. Hundreds of thousands of people flock to Phnom Penh to watch boat races and take part in street fairs. The government has declared Nov. 25 a national day of mourning, Khieu Kanharith said.

Southeast Asia’s second-poorest country has sought to attract foreign investment to boost the incomes of its 14 million people, a third of whom are under 15 years old, according to a Central Intelligence Agency estimate. The government aims to open a stock exchange within the year, after a decade in which annual economic growth averaged 8 percent.

--Editor: Tony Jordan, Ben Richardson.