Cambodia mourns stampede victims

Cambodia marked a national day of mourning Thursday, grieving the more than 300 people who were killed in Monday's stampede at a water festival in the capital of Phnom Penh.

Gneth Srey Keang, 18, the sister of Gneth Srey Neang, who was killed in the bridge stampede on Nov. 22, attends a ceremony Thursday for the victims during a national day of mourning in Phnom Penh. (Chor Sokunthea/Reuters)

Prime Minister Hun Sen and his wife Bun Rany wiped away tears as they lit incense in memory of the at least 347 people who were killed. At least 395 more were injured and some people are still missing.

Police now estimate that there were between 7,000 and 8,000 people on the suspension bridge at the time of the stampede. The bridge started to sway, people began to yell, and the stampede started, crushing some and forcing others into the Bassac River below.

"People became panicked when they saw other people fall down, and they started running when they heard cries that the bridge was going to collapse," city police chief Touch Naroth told AP Television News on Wednesday.

In the wake of public anger, police said they may have concentrated too much on pickpockets and overcrowded boats, and lost sight of the size of the crowd. Some earlier reports had the death toll higher than current estimates, but authorities say that was because of overlapping numbers from different institutions.

Country at near standstill

Flags flew at half-mast and many schools and businesses throughout the country were closed so people could take part in the memorial or watch it on television. A military band played sombre music and uniformed school children carried flowers as the victims' families looked on.

Later in the day, members of the public were allowed to come up to an altar that had been set up for the memorial, laying gifts of fruit, rice and water, which are considered sustenance for the spirits of the dead.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen and his wife, Bun Rany, pay their respects to stampede victims on a day of mourning in Phnom Penh. (Chor Sokunthea/Reuters)

The stampede happened during an annual water festival marking the end of the monsoon season that attracts approximately two million people to the city.

Officials announced Thursday that a permanent memorial will be created either on or near the bridge, to mark the biggest tragedy since the reign of the communist Khmer Rouge, which killed an estimated 1.7-million in the late 1970s.

Some early reports had suggested that some of the dead had been electrocuted, but a member of the government's investigating committee said there were no signs of that. The committee is expected to release its final report next week.

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Cambodian anger over stampede management

Zoe Daniel reported this story on Sunday, November 28, 2010 08:05:00

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ELIZABETH JACKSON: Cambodia is still coming to terms with the deaths of hundreds of people killed in a stampede on Monday at Phnom Penh's annual Water Festival. Most of the bodies have been identified and some funerals have been held, but anger over the management of the event and the lack of control over the huge crowd has grown.

Here's our South-East Asia correspondent Zoe Daniel.

ZOE DANIEL: Cambodian people are extraordinarily resilient, possibly as a result of the country's horrific past. But Monday's stampede shocked the nation, the mass death a grim reminder of the dark days of the Khmer Rouge and an image that Cambodia is trying desperately to shake.

Outside hospitals across the city the confusion and devastation was raw as people searched for the missing and found the dead.

(Sounds of anguished people)

Hundreds lay in makeshift morgues and hundreds more laid inside hospital rooms, battered and bruised but alive. Fifteen-year-old Moeum told me through a translator that he was pinned under a pile of bodies for two hours before he was pulled out by rescuers.

(Moeum speaking)

TRANSLATOR: He says it was too crowded, there was no space to move at all. People just getting closer and closer until they, none of them could move.

ZOE DANIEL: Paul Hurford is an Australian fireman who runs an NGO in Phnom Penh to help train and advise Cambodian authorities on the management of disasters. He and his team from Australian Firefighters International Relief and Education were on the scene with local rescue workers after the stampede.

PAUL HURFORD: The scene was fairly well organised at the time that we arrived, the police had established a secure area for the casualties and were holding the general public out. As it was concerns of so many people within the area.

The ambulance system was working quite well, transporting people to and from, to the hospitals and keeping the people flowing from the site where there wasn't many resources. But there was still a lot of casualties and it wasn't a very pretty sight.

ZOE DANIEL: The scene was horrific - hundreds dead from suffocation and crush injuries and others drowned in the river.

PAUL HURFORD: Personally I found it quite challenging, it's, it was a very large incident and as we see now we've got over 345 fatalities from the event and another 300-plus people seriously injured.

So, I mean, in any scale, whether we're here in Cambodia or in a developed country in a big city, it's still a major incident and still quite challenging for anyone to deal with.

ZOE DANIEL: Dr Tim Keenan is an orthopaedic surgeon from Perth who frequently travels to Cambodia to assist with the Australian Orthopaedic Association's outreach program. He was working in the Kossamak Hospital - one of the places where the dead were brought for identification and the injured were brought for treatment.

DR TIM KEENAN: The people were intertwined and jammed into each other for a number of hours on the bridge and there was really no broken bones but there was what we call these crush injuries where your limbs get sort of under pressure for some period of time and they you get what's called a compartment syndrome where the muscle builds up a lot of pressure and stops the circulation and the sensation to that limb.

ZOE DANIEL: Television footage showed desperate rescuers pulling those who were still alive out of the crush of bodies.

Dr Keenan says the way they were extracted was understandable but not ideal.

DR TIM KEENAN: They're not really skilled or rehearsed at disaster management so a lot of these people were being extracted under quite difficult circumstances and probably the way they were extracted wasn't the correct way to do it.

But still, that's in the circumstances, people extract people the best way they can and then they're brought by an ambulance which isn't really what we would consider an ambulance, without any oxygen or facilities.

One of the big problems in Phnom Penh and the hospital is that the intensive care facilities are very primitive and the staff are not trained in the management of these involved cases so sadly a lot of patients who perhaps in the western situation may have been managed better cannot be managed at that high level here in Phnom Penh.

ZOE DANIEL: The first funerals have been held for the dead, but they haven't given closure to relatives who want to know why crowd control wasn't better. Three million people came to Phnom Penh for the Water Festival, yet the government admits it overlooked the potential for this kind of incident.

Early police investigations indicate that the overloaded bridge was shaking and that probably triggered the stampede.

This is Zoe Daniel reporting for Correspondents Report.

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Thai PM sends condolences to families of victims in Cambodian festival tragedy

BANGKOK, Nov 23 - Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva on Tuesday extended condolences to Cambodian premier Hun Sen to the families of hundreds of lives lost in a stampede at the annual water festival in Cambodia.

The stampede occurred Monday on a narrow bridge, greatly overcrowded, in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh.

"On behalf of the Government and people of Thailand, I wish to extend my sincere condolences and sympathy to you and, through you, to the bereaved families of the victims in this tragic incident.

"My thoughts are with the people of Cambodia in this difficult time. The Thai Government is ready to provide support and assistance to our friends in Cambodia,” Mr Abhisit said in the statement to his Cambodian counterpart Hun Sen.

Thailand Tuesday offered an initial 30,000 dollars in emergency aid to Cambodia following the deadly tragedy.

At least 378 people were killed in a stampede on Koh Pich Bridge at the annual festival for the Great Lake, a Cambodian government spokesman Phay Siphan said Tuesday, adding that the number of casualties was still rising.

Many of the deaths were caused by suffocation and internal injuries, reports indicated, some 755 more people injured in Monday’s tragedy. (MCOT online news)

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Probe finds bridge sway set off Cambodian stampede

Bun Oun, who lost his daughter in Monday's stampede, cries during her cremation at Sombourmeas temple in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, on Wednesday. Photo: AP.

An investigation into a stampede at a festival in the Cambodian capital that killed hundreds of revelers has initially concluded that it was set off when a crowded bridge started swaying, local media reported on Wednesday.

Bayon TV, which serves as a mouthpiece for the government, said that the high—level committee set up to probe the Monday night tragedy found that many of the people on the bridge were from the countryside and unaware that it was normal for a suspension bridge to sway. In their fear it was collapsing, they tried to run off.

Officials have said that 378 people were killed and at least 755 others injured in the stampede. The TV report, however, amended the number of casualties to 750, of whom 350 died. The reason for the discrepancy in the figures was not immediately clear.

The report said the committee based its conclusion on the cause of the stampede from investigations and testimony of witnesses. It happened when tens of thousands of panicked people tried to flee an island in the Bassac River in the capital, Phnom Penh.

Witnesses have criticized authorities for causing congestion by blocking a second bridge across the river despite the huge crowds that had gathered for the festival, and for a slow and confused emergency response.

Prime Minister Hun Sen has described the stampede as the biggest tragedy since the communist Khmer Rouge’s reign of terror, which left an estimated 1.7 million people dead in the late 1970s. He has declared a day of national mourning on Thursday.

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Scenes of grief amid Cambodia crush carnage

By Guy De Launey BBC News, Phnom Penh

Relatives are searching picture boards outside hospitals for missing loved ones

Calmette Hospital is rarely a happy place at the best of times. It may be Phnom Penh's flagship healthcare centre but facilities are basic.

Now the Diamond Island bridge disaster may have turned it into the saddest corner of Cambodia.

Most of those injured in the crush on Diamond Island bridge were brought there, more than 700 of them - a serious challenge for the limited facilities of Calmette and several other Phnom Penh hospitals.

Patients and staff were forced to improvise. The injured lay on the floor if no bed was available, or stayed in the corridors if there was no room in the wards.

But it was not only the wounded who were brought to Calmette. Many of the hundreds who died came as well.

“START QUOTE

I have looked all over and we haven't heard from him. I am losing hope that he is alive”

End Quote Doun Searching for brother

They were laid out in rows inside a number of the city's hospitals. There were also picture boards outside, where people could perform the potentially heart-breaking task of looking for missing friends and relatives.

The boards made for gruesome viewing. The bodies had been laid on bamboo mats, and head-and-shoulders photos taken. Most of the victims had their eyes closed, but a few of them stared blankly into the lens - suggesting life when it had already been extinguished.

Doun was looking for her younger brother, who had not returned home. She had already been to several other hospitals. Now she was scanning the picture board of the dead outside Calmette Hospital.

She looked in vain. A measure of relief for Doun - perhaps her brother was still alive - but frustration and despair as well.

"I have looked all over and we haven't heard from him," she said. "I am losing hope that he is alive."

Others have already discovered their worst fears are true.

On the night of the disaster, a convoy of emergency vehicles shuttled the dead and injured to Calmette. Now the traffic is going the other way, as the bodies are being claimed and taken away in coffins by funeral vehicles.

Srey Luch visited the scene of the disaster to pay her respects

At sunset on the evening following the disaster, police barriers held scores of people back from the scene at Diamond Island. The crowd seemed to be a mixture of the curious, the distressed and those who simply wished to pay their respects to the dead.

Srey Luch arrived at the barrier bearing flowers, incense and prayer candles. She was from Kandal province, close to Phnom Penh, and she knew a number of people who were hurt or missing.

"I want to bless the people who died and those who were injured," she said.

The bridge which was the focus of the carnage looks like an illustration from a fairytale - all turrets and twinkling fairy-lights. But it is barely wide enough to accommodate two cars side by side - and woefully inadequate for the numbers celebrating the Water Festival on Diamond Island.

On the night of the disaster the bridge was closed to vehicles. But the human traffic proved overwhelming.

Witnesses say the bridge was overcrowded but what triggered the stampede is not clear

The cause of the panic was not immediately apparent. Electric shocks from the lights, fights among young people and fears that the structure was about to collapse have all been put forward.

Prime Minster Hun Sen has promised a thorough investigation and the authorities may be helped by footage from a TV network which was broadcasting a live music performance from a stage just yards from the bridge.

Thanks to its three decades of civil war and the horrors of the Khmer Rouge era, Cambodia has a reputation as a place where awful things happen. But many of its mostly young population have grown up with peace and relative prosperity, and have never experienced a disaster before.

A waiter in a local cafe feared the anguish may be about to spread. Most of the visitors to the Water Festival are from the rural provinces and some families would only realise their daughters or sons might have been caught in the crush when they failed to return home.

That raises the possibility of bodies going unclaimed for days and the agony of loss continuing as families arrive in the capital in search of the missing.

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Families seek Cambodia stampede victims

Alastair Leithead: "Suddenly everyone was stampeding, trying to get out of that very confined space"

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Families in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh have been scouring morgues and hospitals in search of relatives missing after a deadly stampede.

Search teams have also been trawling a river for bodies after the crush on a footbridge left at least 378 people dead and hundreds more injured.

Prime Minister Hun Sen declared Thursday a day of mourning and promised an investigation into the disaster.

The stampede happened on the final day of the traditional Water Festival.

Witnesses said the bridge had become overcrowded.

Hun Sen described the stampede as the "biggest tragedy" to hit Cambodia since the mass killings carried out by the Khmer Rouge regime in the 1970s.

He has ordered all government ministries to fly the national flag at half-mast.

At the Preah Kossamak hospital, San Supa told how she discovered that her daughter and son-in-law had died in the stampede.

"They both told me that they wanted to watch the light boat parade at night and then they went missing and I came straight away to the hospital and I found out that they died," she said.

Another woman, Sem Sreyleak, said she had been scouring makeshift morgues and the city's hospitals looking for her niece.

"She came to Phnom Penh a day before the Water Festival started. There is still no news about her," she said.

The bridge crosses the Bassac river, which on Tuesday was being searched for victims believed to have drowned after falling into the water.

Government spokesman Phay Siphan said 755 people had been injured and warned that the death toll could rise further. No foreigners were said to be among those killed.

'Sudden panic'

Authorities had estimated that more than two million people would attend the three-day festival, one of the main events of the year in Cambodia.

Panic broke out after a concert on Diamond Island, which followed a boat race on the Tonle Sap river regarded as a highlight of the festivities.

• Timeline: Deadliest stampedes

Sean Ngu, an Australian who was visiting family and friends in Cambodia, told the BBC too many people had been on the bridge.

He said some of the victims were electrocuted.

"There were too many people on the bridge and then both ends were pushing," he said.

"This caused a sudden panic. The pushing caused those in the middle to fall to the ground, then [get] crushed.

"Panic started and at least 50 people jumped in the river. People tried to climb on to the bridge, grabbing and pulling [electric] cables which came loose and electrical shock caused more deaths."

Funerals have already been held for some of those killed in the stampede

Khon Sros told Reuters news agency from her hospital bed that the area had been packed.

"People were pushing each other and I fell," she said. "People were shouting 'go, go'."

The 19-year-old said she had been pinned in the crowd from her waist down until police pulled her out.

"One man died near me. He was weak and didn't have enough air."

A day after the disasters, sunglasses, flip-flops and brightly coloured clothes lay scattered on the bridge.

Revellers watched as the bodies of youths in party clothes were carried away from the bridge, which was still decked with bright lights from the festival.

Many of the dead appeared to be teenagers.

The stampede is the world's worst since August 2005, when more than 1,000 Shia pilgrims were crushed to death or drowned in the Tigris river in Baghdad, Iraq, after rumours of a suicide bomb attack sparked a panic.

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Officials probe fatal stampede in Cambodia

HUNDREDS KILLED AFTER MAYHEM ON BRIDGE AFTER WATER FESTIVAL

Relatives cry at Preah Kossamak Hospital, where the bodies of stampede victims are laid, in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, on Tuesday. (Associated Press)

By Richard S. Ehrlich

The Washington Times

8:02 p.m., Tuesday, November 23, 2010

BANGKOK | Cambodian officials are investigating why thousands of revelers panicked during a festival in Phnom Penh on Monday and stampeded across a narrow bridge, killing at least 378 people and injuring scores more.

Emergency teams, survivors and distraught relatives and friends desperately searched on Tuesday among corpses strewn on the bridge and floating in the river.

Many of the dead were later laid on the ground in rows, under white cloth, at hospitals before being packed into coffins for cremation.

Police wearing white rubber gloves gently lifted the hands of the dead and pushed their limp fingertips onto blackened ink pads and then onto paper, for identification records.

Authorities also posted photographs of victims for public viewing, hoping to identify the dead and injured.

A Cambodian woman looks for her missing relative at Preah Kossamak Hospital in Phnom Penh on Tuesday. The prime minister called the disaster the country's biggest tragedy since the 1970s reign of terror by the Khmer Rouge. (Associated Press)

The tragedy occurred Monday night during the final celebration of the three-day Water Festival, which marks the end of the tropical rainy season in the impoverished Buddhist-majority country.

Trapped on a 250-acre island in the Tonle Bassac River where the festival was staged, hundreds of people tried to flee across the short, narrow bridge, but began shoving and trampling each other in a melee, while others jumped or fell into the murky water below.

Phnom Penh police Chief Touch Naroth said investigators were still trying to determine the cause but suggested that the bridge's small size may have contributed to the tragedy, the Associated Press reported. "This is a lesson for us," he said on state TV.

Some witnesses said trouble began when a handful of people fainted because of the heat and physical pressure of the large crowd, causing others to nervously try to escape.

Some of the crushed victims writhed in agony, too weak to free themselves from the corpses and injured people who were piled on top of them on the bridge, but rescuers were able to yank some people out alive.

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