Seth Mydans
The New York Times
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia – Injured survivors lay on the floors of crowded hospitals Tuesday as the dead were loaded into coffins after one of the worst stampedes in recent years killed at least 378 people at a holiday celebration.
The cause of the stampede Monday night during Cambodia's annual water festival was unclear, but most of the dead were suffocated, trampled or crushed to death on a small bridge that became so packed that survivors said they had been unable to move or even breathe.
Some of the dead drowned or were killed when they leaped from the bridge into the Bassac River or onto concrete pilings nearby. Witnesses said some people were wedged for hours among the dead, calling out for water, as police used batons to push back crowds so they could clear the bridge.
"They were stacked up like firewood on a pile, people just up and up and up, more than five people up," said Heng Sinith, a photographer for The Associated Press, who said he could hardly bear to press his shutter as he watched.
As the death toll rose, it appeared to be one of the worst such incidents in recent years. In January 2006, 362 Muslim pilgrims were killed while performing a ritual near Mecca, Saudi Arabia. In August 2005, at least 950 people died in a stampede during a procession of Shiite pilgrims as they crossed a bridge in northern Baghdad.
In Cambodia, millions of people pour into the capital each year and line the river's banks and islands for a boat race that is the climax of a festival that marks the end of the rainy season.
Survivors said the crowd on the bridge panicked when people shouted that the slightly swaying structure was about to collapse.
One survivor, Chan Chhay Loeurt, 25, a student, said he had no idea what happened.
"Just people squeezed together," he said. "I can't move. I can't breathe. I can't breathe in and out. I fell unconscious. When I woke up, I was in a police car next to a dead body."
8 comments:
This is in fact the consequence of poor planning from management of RGC.
Accepting mistake made either directly or indirectly will be a step of the right move of RGC.
Better strategic planning is required. Negligence and corruption DO not help any process of both rebuilding and defending our country.
Now a lesson learnt that safety is so vital to life.Taken this into account,RGC can no longer be passive as disaster could be so massive.Traffic safety is a challenge that RGC can prove to citizens.Police is nopt there for taxing/taking bribe.
Meantime my condolence to familfies of those victims of UNSAFE practice.
Peasant
This is a good lesson to learn. There are two main factors for this incident. First, the police force (7,000) are incompetence or careless. For such a big event like this, the police forces should have a good plan i.e. spread the forces all over the island (to secure people), have the echo voice (microphone) handy for delivery message to people to calm people down ect.. Second, poor and uneducated people (young people) lack of common sense and could not think it right. For example, if the bridge is collapsed, the island does not collapse/sink, why running to the bridge? Just stay or hang in on the island. If there is no bridge there will be an evacuation by boat or ferry. Anyhow, it too sad to see this incident happened!
One of the main problems is the lack of knowledge for people from the country side. When the suspension bridge sways, that really caused them panic because they have never used or seen it before. You should have seen them using the elevator in one of the modern malls in Phnom Penh - very scary to watch.
1:28AM why you so stupid by saying thing that you do not know! The panic not from the people on the island but by the people already on part of the bridge!
If the people from the island run up to the bridge it would cause more 1000! No body stupider than you, fool!
1:28AM! Koh Pich is a private property! not all police fault!
But Cambodia guardering permit department should be improved!
1:42! a "concret" suspension bridge should not move so easily!
is not wooden and rope! !
police is verry blind not just thier eye but also thier BRIAN to realise the accident IS waiting to happen. A WHOLE CAMBODIA POLICE SYSTEM IS CORRUPT CORRUPT.....AND SHOULD BE DISMISS ESPECIALLY THE MIDGIT TOUC NAROAT.
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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