People who are trapped under the sampede are being freed.Nov 22, 2010
Monsters and critics
Phnom Penh (DPA)- Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen said early Tuesday that 339 people died and 329 were injured in a stampede on the final day of the annual Water Festival.
That was a drastic rise in the death toll from a statement Hun Sen had made about an hour earlier. He said it was the worst death toll in such a short period since the Khmer Rouge regime was overthrown in 1979.
The victims were mainly young people who panicked while crossing a bridge during water festival celebrations. The stampede happened around 9:30 pm (1430 GMT) Monday.
In a series of live television addresses, Hun Sen updated the toll and said the day should in future be marked as a memorial day, adding that the government would form a committee to look into the causes of the accident.
Emergency service crews took the injured to five hospitals around the capital. An unknown number of people jumped off the bridge to avoid the crush, and rescue crews were still looking for them after midnight.
Ly Vuthy, a vendor who witnessed the incident from her position on the island, told the German Press Agency dpa that well over a thousand people were on the bridge trying to leave Diamond Island when several of them fainted.
The crowd then panicked, she said, and people were packed so tightly on the bridge they were unable to move off it.
'People were feeling trapped and claustrophobic, and many jumped off the bridge,' she said.
Her account was backed up by Sem Pagnaseth, a vendor on the mainland side of the bridge, who said the 100-metre long bridge was 'extremely crowded - thousands of people were on it, standing side by side like fingers pushed together.'
He said barriers set up to prevent people exiting the bridge onto a road on the mainland meant that those leaving the bridge were unable to move away quickly, and the rest backed up behind them.
Sem Pagnaseth said there were few police doing crowd control before the incident, but added that quick action by the police prevented an even worse tragedy.
The dead and injured were ferried to hospitals in ambulances, pickups and private cars.
The water festival is an annual celebration of the end of the monsoon season.
The authorities said last week they expected up to 4 million people to come to Phnom Penh for the festival, more than doubling the capital's population over the three days.
Monsters and critics
Phnom Penh (DPA)- Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen said early Tuesday that 339 people died and 329 were injured in a stampede on the final day of the annual Water Festival.
That was a drastic rise in the death toll from a statement Hun Sen had made about an hour earlier. He said it was the worst death toll in such a short period since the Khmer Rouge regime was overthrown in 1979.
The victims were mainly young people who panicked while crossing a bridge during water festival celebrations. The stampede happened around 9:30 pm (1430 GMT) Monday.
In a series of live television addresses, Hun Sen updated the toll and said the day should in future be marked as a memorial day, adding that the government would form a committee to look into the causes of the accident.
Emergency service crews took the injured to five hospitals around the capital. An unknown number of people jumped off the bridge to avoid the crush, and rescue crews were still looking for them after midnight.
Ly Vuthy, a vendor who witnessed the incident from her position on the island, told the German Press Agency dpa that well over a thousand people were on the bridge trying to leave Diamond Island when several of them fainted.
The crowd then panicked, she said, and people were packed so tightly on the bridge they were unable to move off it.
'People were feeling trapped and claustrophobic, and many jumped off the bridge,' she said.
Her account was backed up by Sem Pagnaseth, a vendor on the mainland side of the bridge, who said the 100-metre long bridge was 'extremely crowded - thousands of people were on it, standing side by side like fingers pushed together.'
He said barriers set up to prevent people exiting the bridge onto a road on the mainland meant that those leaving the bridge were unable to move away quickly, and the rest backed up behind them.
Sem Pagnaseth said there were few police doing crowd control before the incident, but added that quick action by the police prevented an even worse tragedy.
The dead and injured were ferried to hospitals in ambulances, pickups and private cars.
The water festival is an annual celebration of the end of the monsoon season.
The authorities said last week they expected up to 4 million people to come to Phnom Penh for the festival, more than doubling the capital's population over the three days.
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