26 bodies found, 131 still missing after dam collapse: Laos PM
The Laotian prime minister said on Wednesday as many as 131 people are still missing two days after a dam collapse swamped several villages in the country’s south, killing at least 26 people.
In a rare televised press conference by the leader of the secretive communist country, Thongloun Sisoulith gave the most specific figure so far for the number unaccounted for.
Earlier official reports spoke of hundreds missing in Attapeu province. “One hundred and thirty one people have been reported missing,” he said, adding all of them were Lao nationals.
Survivors have questioned why they got little warning of the deluge, which inundated several villages across a vast area with several metres of flood water. Two South Korean contractors said they had reported damage a day before parts of the Xe-Namnoy dam gave way Monday and unleashed a wall of water.
Thai consular official Chana Miencharoen, at the scene of the relief effort told AFP that by late afternoon Wednesday 26 bodies had been recovered. “Seventeen others are injured and in hospital,” he said, adding roof-level floodwater was hampering rescue efforts in a remote area of the poor and landlocked Southeast Asian country.
Information trickled slowly out of Laos as the publicity-shy country tried to get to grips with the disaster. The Vientiane Times reported that 3,000 were in need of rescue as of Wednesday afternoon, taking shelter in trees and on rooftops.