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.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema