Hidden hazards: A screen grab from a video showing smoke rising above a distant base. — AP
Security was tight around a military base in southwestern Cambodia yesterday, a day after a huge explosion there killed 20 soldiers, wounded others and damaged nearby houses.
Guards sought to keep the media away from the site in Kompong Speu province.
Prime Minister Hun Manet said in a Facebook post on Saturday that he was “deeply shocked” when he received the news of the blast in the province’s Chbar Mon district. It was not immediately clear what caused it.
A villager living nearby told AP yesterday that he trembled after hearing the blast because he had never before experienced such a loud explosion.
“When the explosion happened, I was fixing my house with some construction workers,” said Chim Sothea. “Suddenly there was a loud explosion, causing my house to shake, breaking tiles on my roof. They fell down but luckily they didn’t fall inside the house.”
Images from the scene showed several badly damaged buildings on the base, at least one with its roof blown off, and soldiers receiving treatment in a hospital.
Other photos showed nearby houses with holes in their roofs.
Four buildings – three for storage and one work facility – were destroyed and several military vehicles damaged, Col Youeng Sokhon, an army officer at the site, said in a brief report to army chief Gen Mao Sophan, posted on social media.
He added that 25 villagers’ homes were damaged as well.
Photos of the base showed the damaged structures in a large field, apparently with no civilian structures close by.
Another villager, who asked to be named only as Sophal, told AP he had heard a sharp sound, and when he saw smoke rising from the direction of the army base, he realised it was an explosion at the arms depot.
He then ran back to his house from the small shop where he sells food and drink to shelter inside with his wife and two children.
He said the military immediately closed the road to the base and “villagers were in a panic, seeking a safe place”.
He then moved his family to his parents’ home, farther away from the base.
When he returned to his own house hours later, he found it undamaged but other villagers’ houses had broken windows, doors and roofs, he said.
Cambodia, like many countries in the region, has been suffering from an extended heatwave, and the province where the blast took place registered a high of 39ºC on Saturday.
While high temperatures normally can’t detonate ammunition, they can degrade the stability of explosives over a period of time, with the risk that a single small explosion can set off a fire and a chain reaction.
Kiripost, an online English language news service, quoted villager Pheng Kimneang as saying a major explosion occurred at about 2.30pm, followed by smaller blasts for about another hour.
Hun Manet offered condolences to the soldiers’ families and promised the government would pay for their funerals and provide compensation both to those killed and those wounded.
A graduate of the US Military Academy at West Point, he was army commander before he was elected last year to succeed his father, Hun Sen. — AP
