Cambodia PM says no one responsible for stampede

29 November 2010
BBC News

Cambodia's prime minister says no one will be punished over a festival stampede in which 351 people died.

"The incident that happened was the responsibility of the government," said Hun Sen, describing it as "a historical lesson that we must remember".

The country's worst tragedy in decades happened last Monday when revellers at the annual water festival panicked on an overcrowded bridge.

Some people were crushed, while others fell into the river and drowned.

The majority of victims were women, and questions have been raised over who is to blame for the disaster.

Hun Sen said that no state officials were responsible, and described calls for senior government figures to step down as politically motivated.

But he admitted that the government was at fault.

"The incident happened because of carelessness and we didn't expect this thing to happen," he said during the opening of a new government building in the capital.

"The biggest mistake was that we had not fully understood the situation."

Officials say a full report on the incident will be issued in the coming days.

A preliminary investigation has found that the swaying of the Diamond Gate bridge near Phnom Penh triggered a panic.

Between 7,000 and 8,000 people are thought to have been on the narrow bridge at the time.

A committee set up to investigate the disaster found that many of those on the suspension bridge were from the countryside and were unaware that such structures often swayed, local media reported.

Hun Sen has described the stampede as the country's biggest tragedy since the Khmer Rouge era in the 1970s, which left an estimated 1.7 million people dead.