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Attapeu (Laos) – 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 rescuers were looking for over 130 missing.
The last badessment 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 dead.
Water has now reached neighboring Cambodia, engulfing 17 villages and leaving thousands displaced.
" 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 reporting dead or missing. The Cambodian authorities, which are organizing Sunday legislative elections, expect a rising waters and new evacuations, after those started Wednesday.
Three days after the tragedy, under heavy monsoon rains sweeping through Laos, rescuers, including reinforcements sent by China, Vietnam and Thailand, were mobilized, distributing relief kits and supplies.
The roads have been badly damaged or even totally 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 most affected area was banned to the media, said an AFP team on the spot. Since the tragedy occurred on Monday, the Laotian authoritarian regime tightly controls the news.
" 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 to AFP Tran Thanh, a villager in his forties who managed to flee the village of Ban May.
He badures that villagers are isolated, surrounded by water, on a mountain near the village, waiting for help to reach them.
Lao Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith waited two days after the tragedy Wednesday night to deliver the first official human toll of the Xe-Namnoy Dam disaster.
– Too late –
The survivors, traumatized, said Thursday had been warned too late.
" Nobody informed us, the inhabitants saw the water coming in and began to scream ", accuses, like other inhabitants interviewed by AFP, Poosa Duangapai, a refugee in a collective shelter 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 of collapse of the 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 the villagers, the controversy is that damage, caused by heavy rains, had been detected on the structure several days before its collapse, without any preventive evacuation being carried out.
More than 50 hydroelectric projects are underway in Laos, a small rural and mountainous country in the heart of the Indochinese peninsula.
Laos exports most of this electricity, particularly to China, Vietnam and Thailand.
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