Death Toll Reaches 456 After Stampede in Cambodia

Cambodian authorities are investigating the stampede that left 456 people dead on Monday and found as possible cause of the panic a swaying footbridge.

The disaster occurred as immense crowds were crossing the bridge to arrive to an island near the capital of the country Phnom Penh where they were expected to attend an annual water festival.

As the panic began, many people were crushed on the bridge, according to eyewitnesses, while other fell off in and drowned.

The Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen said that this is the biggest tragedy of the country since the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s, which killed 1.7 million people. Consequently, the PM declared Thursday as national mourning day.

The committee established to investigate the causes of the disaster, formed of ministers and city officials, interviewed some eyewitnesses and found out that many of the people on the bridge at the moment when the stampede occurred were from the countryside and had no knowledge that this kind of bridge was designed to sway when there was wind, or if a large number of people was using it.

When the bridge began to sway, the people wanted to get off the bridge and thus they became afraid that the bridge would collapse and tried to save their lives.

The committee says that the stampede was exacerbated by the fact that the people had trouble breathing because they were tightly packed.

It is estimated that 7,000 to 8,000 people were on the bridge at the moment when the commotion began.

The survivors, on their turn, accused the authorities for causing congestion by blocking a second route across the river, especially since there were thousands of people who were attending the festival.

An Australian who was visiting family in Cambodia said that there were too many people on the bridge and that both ends started pushing, crushing those in the middle.

Some 50 people fell in the river and as they were trying to climb back to the bridge by pulling the electric cables in the process, thus making the cables hang lose, and provoking electric shocks that killed other people.

Official initial reports were referring to 378 people killed and 755 others injured. However, in a statement issued by Social Affairs Minister on Wednesday the death toll was of 456, as many people were taken home from the accident site, where they later on expired.

This stampede is the worse in the world since 2005, when 1,000 Shia people were killed in Baghdad, Iraq.