At least 25 people died in the fire that ravaged a casino hotel in Cambodia on the night of December 28-29. A large-scale rescue operation resumed on Friday, December 30, with fears of new bodies being found at the site, which was home to several hundred customers and employees at the time of the tragedy.
“It is a tragedy in this holiday season,” Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen said on Friday from Kampot in the south of the country. “We are continuing the search for victims this morning. There could be more bodies,” he added, adding that “more than 1,000 customers and approximately 500 employees” were in Grand Diamond City when the fire broke out.
The hotel-casino that burned down is located in Poipet, a Cambodian town on the border with Thailand. The toll has continued to deteriorate since Thursday, with 25 bodies already found, according to the latest report given to Agence France-Presse (AFP) by Sek Sokhom, representative of Banteay Mean Chey province.
“Unsafe Place”
Cambodian police and military, Cambodian and Thai rescuers… Hundreds of rescuers were busy around the imposing complex of which only parts of the flame-blackened facades remain at dawn Friday morning. The search is now expanding to specific areas that were inaccessible due to smoke the day before, Jakkapong Ruengdech, one of the leaders of a Thai rescue team, told AFP.
Footage taken at the time of the fire showed people cornered on balconies or window sills to escape meter-high flames. A Thai rescuer told AFP the fire spread quickly in the hotel-casino due to the carpet.
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“Right from the start I had the feeling that this place was not well secured. Everything inside was old,” Nueng, a Thai employee at the hotel-casino who is awaiting news of his father, who was caught in the blaze, told AFP. The Cambodian authorities have not yet called the causes of the fire.
Thirteen seriously injured people were being treated in Thai hospitals near the border on Thursday, according to authorities in Sa Kaeo province.
200 meters from Thailand
The Grand Diamond City is about 200 meters from the border post on the busy road connecting the Thai capital of Bangkok with Siem Reap, a Cambodian tourist town known for the nearby Angkor temples.
The law prohibits citizens of Cambodia, one of Asia’s poorest countries, from gambling in casinos, but many overseas casinos have sprung up in border towns like Poipet, where a mainly Thai clientele congregates. Casinos are officially banned in Thailand, which prompts players to go to Cambodia.
In recent months, several deadly fires have erupted in nightspots across Southeast Asia, which are regularly suspected of failing to observe basic safety rules.
In August, a fire at a nightclub near Pattaya, Thailand, killed 26 people, mostly young local people who came to party. A month later, 32 people were killed in a fire at a karaoke bar in suburban Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.