PHNOM PENH – Saffron-robed Buddhist monks chanted as onlookers gazed silently across a bridge piled with the shoes and torn clothing left behind by victims of a stampede in Cambodia’s capital.
The body count stood at 375 by sunset yesterday and was expected to rise. Many people were missing and Cambodians had many questions about one of the darkest days of their country’s recent and troubled history.The cause of the stampede on the Diamond Gate bridge late on Monday, the last day of an annual three-day Water Festival, remained a mystery.’Everyone is shocked that this can happen to us,’ said Chhun Sreypong, 45, clutching her one-year-old baby and looking out across Phnom Penh’s Tonle Sap river, from where scores of limp bodies were dragged.’Those who died were mostly youngsters. Many mothers have lost their children. No one knows why this happened.’About 755 people were injured.Not since the era of the ultra-Maoist Khmer Rouge three decades ago, when 1.7 million people were killed in four years, has Cambodia seen such a huge loss of life.Scores of people leapt to their deaths from the pedestrian bridge, unable to swim and dragged under water amid frantic splashing as desperate and panicked people plunged down from above. While many victims drowned, most perished while trapped under the weight of hundreds of fleeing revellers.Hours after the tragedy, the scene was untouched. Shoes, flip-flops and ripped clothing piled up a foot high across some parts of the 80-metre bridge linking Phnom Penh to a gawdy man-made entertainment island packed with restaurants, fairground rides and exhibition cen-tres. – Nampa-Reuters
