Research continues on Friday in the calcined structure of the establishment, where several hundred people were at the time of the start of the fire.
MO12345lemonde with AFP
At least twenty-five people died in the Ncendie who ravaged a Cambodia hotel in the night of December 28 to 29. A vast rescue operation resumed Friday, December 30, with the fear of finding new lifeless bodies on this site where there were several hundred customers and employees at the time of the drama.
“It is a tragedy in this holiday season,” Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, from Kampot, southern in the south of the country on Friday. “We are continuing this morning to seek victims. There could be more bodies,” he added, adding that “more than 1,000 customers and around 500 employees” were in Grand Diamond City when the fire s ‘is declared.
The burnting hotel-cassino is located in Poipet, a Cambodian city on the border of Thailand. The results have continued to worsen since Thursday, with already twenty-five bodies found, according to the latest assessment reported to the France-Presse (AFP) agency by Sek Sokhom, representative of the province of Banteay Mean Chey.
“Place not well secured”
Cambodian police and soldiers, Cambodian and Thai rescuers … Hundreds of rescuers were activating Friday from dawn around the imposing complex of which there are only sides of facades blackened by the flames. Research is now extending to certain areas that were inaccessible the day before due to smoke, JakkaPong Ruengdech, one of the officials of a team of Thai rescuers, told AFP.
Images taken at the time of the fire showed people cornered on balconies or on the windows to escape flames several meters high. A Thai rescuer told AFP that the fire had quickly spread to the hotel-cassino due to the presence of carpet.
“I had the feeling from the start that this place was not well secured. Everything inside was old,” a Thai employee of the Hôtel-Casino told AFP, who awaits news from his father trapped by the flames. Cambodian authorities have not yet mentioned the causes of the fire.
thirteen seriously injured were treated Thursday in Thai hospitals close to the border, according to the authorities of the province of his Kaeo.
200 meters from Thailand
The Grand Diamond City is approximately 200 meters from the border post, on the animated road which links the Thai capital Bangkok to Siem Reap, Cambodian tourist town known for the temples of Angkor located nearby.
The law prohibits the citizens of Cambodia, one of the poorest countries in Asia, to participate in games of money in casinos, but many casinos for foreigners have swarmed in border cities, like PEPET , where an essentially Thai clientele flows. Casinos are officially banished in Thailand, which pushes players to go to Cambodia.
In recent months, several deadly fires in night establishments, regularly suspected of not respecting basic safety rules, have declared themselves in Southeast Asia.
In August, a fire in a nightclub near Pattaya, Thailand, left twenty-six dead, mainly young locals who came to party. A month later, thirty-two people died in the fire of a karaoke bar in the suburbs of Ho Chi Minh City, in Vietnam.