Stampede in Cambodia Leaves Hundreds Dead
Heng Sinith/Associated Press
People were pushed onto a bridge in Phnom Penh on Monday. More Photos »
By SETH MYDANS
Published: November 22, 2010
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — More than 300 people were killed and hundreds more were injured in a stampede at an annual water festival in Cambodia that the prime minister on Tuesday called the nation’s worst tragedy since the murderous Khmer Rouge regime more than three decades ago.
Tang Chhin Sothy/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The Cambodian military police on Tuesday surrounded the bodies of the victims of a stampede at an annual water festival. More Photos »
Witnesses here in the capital said the stampede began Monday night when people panicked in a dense crowd on a small island close to the shore of the Bassac River.
Hundreds of people tried to escape over a short suspension bridge. Many died of suffocation, were crushed underfoot, or were electrocuted by loose wires. Many drowned when they leapt from the suspension bridge into the water.
The night was filled with the constant sound of sirens and, at the scene and in the hospital, with the wailing of people discovering dead friends or relatives.
“This is the biggest tragedy in more than 31 years since thePol Pot regime,” Prime Minister Hun Sen said in one of several television announcements through the night, referring to the mass killings of the Khmer Rouge between 1975 and 1979.
Millions of people pour into the capital each year and line the river’s shores and islands in densely packed crowds for a boat race that is the climax of the water festival. The last boat race ended early Monday evening, the final night of the holiday, and a concert was being held on the island, called Diamond Island, a long spit of land close to the royal palace on the shore.
There was no confirmation of the cause of the stampede, but Information Minister Khieu Kanharith said it began when what he said were one million people became “scared of something.”
“I got information that when the incident happened, some people thought the bridge was falling,” he said. “They were so frightened.”
“People were frightened that the bridge would break.”
The police and rescuers had to fight their way through crowds, sometimes beating people with their belts to get through, according to reports from the scene.
Video from the site showed scenes of horror with bodies lying here and there and frantic rescuers rushing among them.
People searched, weeping, through the corridors of the hospital, where bodies lay on the floor wrapped in woven mats or under sarongs. Hospital workers threw white sheets over groups of bodies on the floor. White-coated hospital personnel hurried through rooms jammed with cots.
One survivor, Chhin Chenda, 16, was lying on a cot at the hospital. She said, “At first we were frightened of an electric wire. After that I fell and people ran over me. People were stepping on me. I called out, ‘Please help me.’ ”
She said her mother and a cousin died in the stampede. Relatives found the mother’s body at the hospital on Tuesday, but not the cousin’s.
Another survivor, Meoun Ly Heang, 12, said he went to the island with his 22-year-old sister without permission from their parents because he wanted to watch the festival. They came from Kandal Province. When the panic began, he said, “I couldn’t move, my leg was stuck. I couldn’t stand, I couldn’t move. My sister died. She could not breathe. She fell and people stepped on her.”
The boy recalled his sister’s last words, “She was saying, ‘Please don’t step on me,’ ” he said.
After the stampede, people staggered from the scene either alone or supported by rescuers. Some sat on the ground, holding their hands to their chests and breathing with difficulty.
Other people carried bodies, both the dead and the badly injured, by their arms and legs; they knelt on the ground fanning those who were still alive or trying to perform CPR; they loaded the dead and badly injured onto flatbed trucks or the backs of motorcycles and packed them into ambulances.
A doctor, Pok Somporn, said when he arrived at the hospital there were about 140 dead people and more than 100 people injured. “This is the first time this many have come to our hospital,” he said. This is the worst time for us.”
Bodies were taken to a temporary tent morgue, outside the hospital. People were reaching through a window in the large tent and lifting sheets inside to search for people who had died.
In the aftermath, the suspension bridge with its delicate fretwork was carpeted with the shoes and bits of clothes of those who had been crushed or fled.
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