By SETH MYDANS
The New York Times
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — Investigators in Cambodia said on Wednesday that a stampede that caused the deaths of 350 people who were suffocated or crushed Monday night was probably touched off by the slight swaying of a short suspension bridge packed with holiday-goers on the last evening of an annual water festival.
The report, carried on Bayon TV, a government-owned station, said 400 people had been injured. Most of the victims were among the millions of rural people who travel to the capital each year for the festival. Earlier estimates of the casualties had been higher.
By Wednesday morning, most of the dead had been identified at hospitals and transported in the backs government trucks to their villages, along with grieving relatives.
At Calmette Hospital, where 140 people had been laid out in white sheets in an outdoor morgue, just three bodies remained unclaimed. Several people wandered the hospital’s grounds holding snapshots of missing relatives, including smiling wedding portraits and holiday photographs.
The bridge where they had died, roped off with yellow tape, remained littered with the sandals and shoes and bits of clothing that had been torn from the victims in the crush.
1 comment:
Your Majesty Samdech Ta former King Norodom Sihanouk,
Prime Minister Samdech Hun Sen,
Thank you for your both kindness and understanding.
What we need is prevention methods, not to let this type of accident happen again in the future.
It also makes me very worried to see so much alcohol allowed to enter or be produced in our beloved Kingdom of Cambodia? What about “ YA BA “ and other types of DRUGS from Thailand and Vietnam?
Can His Majesty Samdech Ta and Samdech Hun Sen stop all sorts of drugs coming to Cambodia? The accident may not be related to drugs and alcohol but just some thing that I could not sleep peacefully from now on to the future, in the names sake of true Khmer citizen.
Can Samdech Hun Sen kindly ask all 5 million Vietnamese illegal immigrants to peacefully return to Vietnam, so Koh Pich will not be too crowded more and more every day, every month and every year to come.
All Vietnamese illegal immigrants can easily come in and settle inside Cambodia even though they already have their own country Vietnam.
When Cambodia is too crowded, definitely we Khmer people can not go to settle inside Vietnam, can we?
Please Vietnamese, you said you came to rescue us from Pol Pot, and you don’t want to return home, it is not right according to 23rd October 1991 Paris Peace Agreement, can all of you go back to your country now.
Vietnamese illegal immigrants, you see because 5 million of you are inside Cambodia, it makes us too crowded and we wasted our lives at Koh Pich without good reasons.
Your Vietnamese Communism expansionist mind in Cambodia, is to give an excuse to China mainland to occupy your Spratly Islands, Parcel Islands, the whole of your Eastern sea border and perhaps the Northern border sooner or later.
5 million Vietnamese illegal immigrants in Cambodia, please go back home to defend your country from Chinese mighty economic invasion.
May I pray to God and the Lord Jesus Christ that those who have lost loved one will be comforted.
My condolences to all the victim's family.
Regards,
Kulen Monorom
(The rice farmer's son)
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