Workers searched for bodies yesterday after a section of a massive bridge under construction in southern Vietnam collapsed, killing at least 43 people and injuring 87 others.
Nguyen Van Cong, spokesman for Vietnam's transportation ministry, said six bodies were discovered yesterday morning and six people were still missing. All the victims were Vietnamese construction workers.
Hospital officials said the death toll was likely to rise as many of the victims had serious injuries.
In one ward at Can Tho's Military Hospital, three of the 11 patients were in critical condition and several had serious brain injuries.
"We have three patients on respirators and it's very unlikely that they will survive," said Tran Ngoc Vu, a doctor at the hospital.
The only patient in the ward well enough to speak was Nguyen Quoc Trung, 31, who was working on the section of the bridge that collapsed.
"We were working normally and all of a sudden we were flying down," Trung said.
He landed semi-conscious, with his chest stuck between concrete and twisted metal.
"I didn't know if I was in the jungle or the middle of the air," Trung said. "I didn't know where I was."
After two hours, rescue workers pulled him from the wreckage. Two of his friends, who had been working next to him, died in the accident, Trung said.
The cause of the collapse is under investigation.
The Japanese-financed bridge will cross the Hau River, a branch of the Mekong River, linking Vinh Long Province and Can Tho, the largest city in the Mekong Delta. Thousands of people currently make the crossing each day by ferry.
The 100m section of the bridge that collapsed was above a small island on the Vinh Long side of the bridge, just beyond the ramp that connects the span to land.
Large chunks of concrete and mangled steel dangled from the three pylons that held up the buckled span and three cranes moved about the area, hoisting large chunks of debris.
A stretcher lay on the ground and rescue workers and family members crowded the area.
Emergency workers assisted one elderly woman who had collapsed on the ground, apparently overcome by stress.
The 2.75km bridge is one of the largest construction projects in Vietnam. The construction work is being done by a consortium of three Japanese firms -- Taisei Corp, Kajima Corp and Nippon Steel Corp. A fourth Japanese firm, Nippon Koei-Chodai, is the chief consultant on the US$218 million project.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver