ELEANOR HALL: We go first to Cambodia and this morning the government ordered an investigation into just what caused that stampede that killed hundreds of people who were celebrating in the country's capital.
The deadly crush erupted on a bridge in Phnom Penh where millions of people were attending the last day of an annual waterfront festival.
The Cambodian prime minister is calling the stampede the country's biggest tragedy since the Khmer Rouge reign of terror in the 1970s.
Brendan Trembath has the latest.
BRENDAN TREMBATH: Chaos on the riverfront in Cambodia's capital Phnom Penh. Authorities are not certain why there was a stampede on a crowded bridge but several hundred people are dead and hundreds injured.
In this developing country the emergency services have struggled with so many casualties.
MICHELLE FITZPATRICK: My colleagues at the hospital said that people were just standing there in shock with tears in their eyes and could barely bring themselves to speak. It's an incredible event.
BRENDAN TREMBATH: Michelle Fitzpatrick, the local bureau chief for AFP - Agence France Presse - she's told the BBC that the stampede happened on the last day of the Water Festival at a time when thousands of people were about.
MICHELLE FITZPATRICK: The annual Water Festival is actually one of Cambodia's biggest festivals. Millions of people come to the capital. This week in the (inaudible) people were in Phnom Penh out on the streets celebrating.
The highlight of the event are the annual dragon boat races, it's when over 400 boats race up and down the Tole Sap river, even the King watches these races. It's a very big deal over here.
BRENDAN TREMBATH: Sean Ngu lives in Phnom Penh and he could hear the festivities on the river front. But just before midnight the tone of the crowd suddenly changed.
SEAN NGU: At about 11 we heard celebrations, people were cheering and it went from that to screaming and panicking. Screams, you know, the funny screams, you feel, it brings goosebumps onto the back of your neck basically.
So we rushed there. We see people just pushing one end, the other end pushing and then people in the middle started collapsing.
BRENDAN TREMBATH: Doctors at city hospitals in Phnom Penh have been up all night treating the injured and trying to identify the dead. One physician who answered his mobile phone relayed the death toll to The World Today but couldn't spare anymore time to talk.
The news service, Reuters, says most of the victims were crushed or drowned.
The Water Festival is an annual three day event which attracts millions of Cambodians from the city and the countryside. It can be a magnet for curious tourists. The Australian Embassy in Phnom Penh says Cambodian authorities have confirmed that no Australians were involved in the stampede.
Cambodia's prime minister, Hun Sen, has described the disaster as the biggest tragedy to strike his country since the massacre of more than a million people during the communist rule in the 1970s.
The prime minister has called for an investigation into the stampede.
Steve Finch reports for the English language newspaper, the Phnom Penh Post.
STEVE FINCH: Certainly the most tragic event in Cambodia in the last 10 years or so. I mean obviously the country has seen a lot of tragedy, 30 years ago during the Khmer Rouge era but not for some time now and this really is a major event in Cambodia.
BRENDAN TREMBATH: He and his colleagues are also trying to piece together what happened.
STEVE FINCH: We're hearing reports that there may have been people electrocuted because the police started firing water cannons at a large crowd that weren't moving off the bridge. And apparently there were people electrocuted and they then fell into the river and that's when you had a situation in which the authorities were then fishing out dead bodies.
So that's all we're hearing at the moment but that's still not clear.
BRENDAN TREMBATH: The Cambodian government has declared Thursday a national day of mourning.
ELEANOR HALL: Brendan Trembath reporting.
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http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2010/s3074012.htm
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