Phnom Penh:
Injured survivors lay on the floors of hospitals here Tuesday, and the dead were loaded into coffins after one of the worst stampedes in recent years killed at least 378 people at a holiday celebration.
The cause of the stampede on Monday night during Cambodia's annual water festival was unclear, but most of the dead were suffocated or trampled or crushed to death on a small bridge that became so packed that survivors said they had been unable to move or even breathe.
Some of the dead drowned or were killed when they leaped from the bridge into the Bassac River or onto concrete pilings nearby. Witnesses said some people were wedged for hours among the dead, calling out for water, as the police used batons to push back crowds so they could clear the bridge.
"They were stacked up like firewood on a pile, people just up and up and up, more than five people up," said Heng Sinith, a photographer for The Associated Press, who said he could hardly bear to press his shutter as he watched.
"People were calling out for water," he said. " 'Please help me, please help me!' I feel so bad that I could not help them. I could not help them because they were locked together."
The government denied reports that some were electrocuted by loose wires or by lights on the bridge. Some survivors said the crowd panicked when people shouted that the slightly swaying bridge was about to collapse.
As the death toll rose, it appeared to surpass the worst recent stampede toll of 362 Muslim pilgrims who were crushed while performing a ritual at the entrance to a bridge near Mecca in Saudi Arabia in January 2006. In August 2005, at least 950 people died in a stampede during a procession of Shiite pilgrims as they crossed a bridge in northern Baghdad. Prime Minister Hun Sen called it the worst tragedy in Cambodia since the mass killings that took place under the Khmer Rouge, who ruled the country from 1975 to 1979.
Millions of people pour into the capital each year and line the river's banks and islands in almost impenetrable crowds for a boat race that is the climax of a festival that marks the end of the rainy season.
A military police colonel who had interviewed survivors at Calmette Hospital said it appeared that people from both ends of the bridge had been pushing against one another, causing the crush.
One survivor, Chan Chhay Loeurt, 25, a student, said he had no idea what happened.
"Just people squeezed together," he said. "I can't move. I can't breathe. I can't breathe in and out. I fell unconscious. When I woke up, I was in a police car next to a dead body."
Video from the site showed bodies scattered on the ground and frantic rescuers rushing among them.
At Calmette Hospital, people searched, weeping, through the corridors, where bodies lay on the floor wrapped in woven mats or under sarongs. Hospital workers threw white sheets over groups of bodies. White-coated hospital staff members hurried through rooms jammed with cots.
One woman, Nyo Sun, knelt on the ground and lifted the skirt of the tent serving as a temporary morgue, reaching in to touch the foot of her 19-year-old daughter, Chanda, a garment factory worker who had been the main breadwinner for her rural family.
"She said, 'I just want to watch the festival one more night,' " the mother said, lifting the sheet that covered her to show one leg in bright green trousers.
"I don't know how I'm going to get her home," she said. "I have no money to transport her."