The Associated Press
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- Buddhist monks prayed for happiness and safety Wednesday at a ceremony to reopen a bridge in the Cambodian capital where at least 353 revelers were trampled to death last month in a riverside stampede.
The two-lane suspension bridge over the Bassac River had been closed since the Nov. 22 tragedy, when thousands of festival-goers crammed onto it and panicked when it began to sway, setting off the deadly stampede.
Prime Minister Hun Sen has called it the country's biggest tragedy since the communist Khmer Rouge's reign of terror, which killed an estimated 1.7 million people in the late 1970s.
Five chanting monks joined Phnom Penh's governor, Kep Chuktema, and other officials at a somber event to reopen the bridge for use.
The governor said two more bridges will be built alongside the 328-foot- (100-meter-) long bridge to help reduce traffic between the mainland to a small island in the Bassac River, where tens of thousands had flocked for a free concert at the end of a three-day holiday marking the close of the monsoon season.
Preliminary findings by an official investigation committee found that the natural swaying of a suspension bridge ignited fears it would collapse among an estimated 5,000 to 7,000 people on the structure. In frantic efforts to escape, the crowd pressed and heaved, crushing hundreds of people and leading some to dive off the span into the water.
The official casualty toll is 353 dead and 395 injured.
Hun Sen has announced that families of the dead would each be given at least $12,000, an enormous sum in a country where the annual per capita income is just over $700.
3 comments:
do not go to koh moronak any more. you must remember the ghost 353.
Hun Xen should move his house their for better security! Do you dare AH Kwack???????????
Than you bodyguard can take over the Navy and no living soul can reach your fort except the spirit of 353 and the joint force of K5, crenad attact and the coup 1997! Oh Piset polika TOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooo!
All the GHOST victims came to SCARE ah Hun Sen,ah Kep Chuktema,ah Naroth Chef police in Phnom Penh,ah Pung Kheav Se every single day and night,and all CPP Members all the rest of their lives.
The BRAVE GHOST ALIVES will protest around the world and Khmer 14 million GHOSTS will hang your necks like Saddam Hussein.
Hun Sen and CPP lack of support from Cambodian citizens,you will be dead and will live in hell.
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