BANGKOK, Thailand — At least 349 people were killed and hundreds more were injured in a stampede at an annual water festival in Cambodia that the prime minister today called the nation’s worst tragedy since the murderous Khmer Rouge regime more than three decades ago.
Witnesses in Phnom Penh, 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 or were crushed underfoot. 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 the Pol 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.
The government television station said 349 people had been killed and 500 injured. Authorities said there were no foreigners among the dead or injured.
Calmette Hospital, the capital’s main medical facility, was filled to capacity with bodies as well as patients, some of whom had to be treated in hallways. Relatives, some crying, searched for the missing this morning.
“I was taken by shock. I thought I would die on the spot. Those who were strong enough escaped, but women and children died,” said Chea Srey Lak, a 27-year-old woman who was knocked over by the panicked crowd on the bridge.
She managed to escape but described a woman, about 60 years old, lying next to her who was trampled to death by hundreds of fleeing feet.
“There were cries and calls for help from everywhere, but nobody could help each other. Everyone just ran,” she said at Calmette Hospital, where she was being treated for leg and hand injuries.
Philip Heijmans, a 27-year old photographer from Brooklyn, New York, who arrived at the scene half-an-hour after the stampede, walked up the bridge to see hundreds of shoes and pieces of clothing, then a body, then more “bodies stacked on bodies.” Heijmans works for the Cambodia Daily, a local English-language newspaper.
Millions of people pour into the capital each year and line the river’s shores and islands 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.
Soft-drink vendor So Cheata said the trouble began when about 10 people fell unconscious in the press of the crowd. She said that set off a panic, which then turned into a stampede, with many people caught underfoot.
There was no confirmation of the cause of the stampede, but Information Minister Khieu Kanharith said it began when what he said were 1 million people became “scared of something.”
The prime minister declared Thursday would be a national day of mourning. Government ministries were ordered to fly the flag at half staff. He said that the government would pay the families of each dead victim $1,250 for funeral expenses and provide $250 for each injured person.
The government has set up an investigative committee to determine the cause of a stampede last night that killed at least 349 people during an annual water festival which draws more than a million rural residents to the capital.
“We never had this kind of tragedy before,” government spokesman Khieu Kanharith said by phone from Phnom Penh. “We call for all eyewitnesses and people who were wounded to testify about what happened.” Information for this article was contributed by Seth Mydans of The New York Times, by Sopheng Cheang of The Associated Press, and by Daniel Ten Kate of Bloomberg News.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 11/23/2010