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HANOI: At least 36 people died Wednesday morning
following the collapse of a bridge under construction in southern
Vietnam, police said.
“Thirty six people have died
from the accident,” either immediately or after being taken to
hospital, said Dang Quang Tam, director of the Can Tho provincial
hospital.
“Many of the 95 injured in our
hospital are in serious condition,” Tam said.
He made the comments to AFP after
a meeting of local authorities on the accident, which occurred
Wednesday morning in Vinh Long province.
Vietnamese national television
VTV said more than 100 people have been injured, almost half of them
in serious condition. Le Tan Hoc, director of the provincial
department for Public Works.
About 250 workers and engineers
were working on the Can Tho bridge when the accident happened, Hoc
told AFP.
“The top priority now is rescue
work,” said Ngo Thinh Duc, vice-minister of Transport, on VTV.
“The most difficult thing now is to dismantle the huge fallen
concrete blocks to save people underneath.”
He said about 150 military
personnel have been mobilized.
Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung,
currently in New York for the United Nations general assembly, sent
an urgent message asking authorities to instigate a major rescue
operation and investigate the cause of the accident.
Officials did not immediately
explain why the accident happened.
But the online VNExpress quoted
police sources as saying a weak scaffolding system fell down,
leading to the collapse of parts of the bridge that were only set in
concrete on Tuesday.
The bridge is planned to cross
the Hau river and link Can Tho and Vinh Long provinces. The accident
occurred on the Vinh Long province side of the 16-kilometer bridge,
and not in Can Tho province as previously said, Hung told AFP.
The newspaper website quoted Manh
Hung, a worker and witness of the accident as saying workers heard a
very loud noise at one end of the bridge.
“Workers started shouting. The
scene was terrible as a giant concrete block fell onto so many
people working underneath,” he said.
The online VNExpress said
construction on the site started in September 2004. The $300-million
bridge, built with Official Development Assistance from the Japanese
government, was expected to be completed next year, it added.
The Japanese Embassy in Hanoi was
not immediately available for comments.
“We have not known of any
foreign engineers among the victims,” police officer Hung told AFP
from the site.
--AFP
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