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Muddy streams of water escaped from a hydroelectric dam in Laos on Thursday hit neighboring Cambodia, where thousands of villagers had to be evacuated, while in Laos the rescuers were looking for more than 130 missing.
The latest record of this unprecedented accident for Laos, which relies on the development of many electric dams to satisfy the appetites of its Asian neighbors, is 27.
Water has now reached neighboring Cambodia, engulfing 17 villages and thousands of displaced people.
"Seventeen villages were flooded because of the collapse of the Laos dam," spokesman for Stung Streng province told AFP.
"We evacuated 5,600 villagers because their houses were submerged," he said, without mentioning dead or missing. The Cambodian authorities, which are organizing parliamentary elections on Sunday, expect a rise in water and new evacuations, after those started on Wednesday.
Three days after the tragedy, under heavy rain monsoon sweeping Laos, the rescuers, including reinforcements sent by China, Vietnam and Thailand, were mobilized, distributing relief kits and supplies.
The roads were badly damaged or even completely washed away. In Laotian villages, where water began to fall on Thursday, residents were trying to save what could be, ridding the streets of dead animals.
But the worst-hit area was banned from the media. an AFP team on the spot. Since the tragedy occurred on Monday, the Laotian authoritarian regime tightly controls the information.
"I saw many bodies … There were bodies floating … The authorities picked them up but they did not pack the bodies properly and it was terrible, "testifies AFP Tran Thanh, a villager in his forties who managed to flee the village of Ban May.
that villagers are isolated, surrounded by the waters, on a mountain near the village, in the expectation that help can reach them.
The Laotian Prime Minister, Thongloun Sisoulith, waited Wednesday night, two days after the drama, to deliver the first official human toll of the disaster of the Xe-Namnoy Dam.
– Too late –
The survivors, traumatized, badured Thursday that they had been warned too late.
"No one told us The inhabitants saw the water arrive and began to shouting ", accuses, like other residents interviewed by AFP, Poosa Duangapai, a refugee shelter collective established in a nursery school.
She traveled several kilometers on her small tractor, to escape the waters that covered her village of Kok Kloy. "That's all I have left," she adds.
Monday, "the authorities warned us by loudspeaker around 4:00 pm that water was going to be released … We were not aware of the risk dam, "says Tran Van Bien, a Vietnamese farm worker who managed to flee the area with his wife and five-year-old son.
In addition to a late warning to villagers, the controversy is about the fact that damage, caused by very heavy rains, had been spotted on the structure several days before its collapse, without any preventive evacuation being carried out.
More than 50 hydroelectric projects are being carried out in Laos, a small rural country and mountainous landlocked in the heart of the Indochinese peninsula.
Laos exports most of this electricity, especially to China, Vietnam and Thailand.
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