At least twelve people have died and some 100 were injured during a large fire that consumed a casino in the Cambodian city of Poipet, 200 meters from the Thai border, early Thursday morning.
The vast majority of the injured, whose condition is not specified, are being treated in hospitals in Thailand, according to the
Thai Enquirer
.
The Thai Ministry of Health urged the health centers in the province of Sa Kaeo, adjacent to Poipet, to be prepared for the possible arrival of injuries, in a message posted on social networks.
Rescue teams
are now looking for possible victims within the rubble of the building.
According to the Cambodian authorities, the fire started on Wednesday around 11:30 p.m. local time (15:30 GMT) in the casino located in the Diamond City complex and it took more than
nine hours to fully control the flames.
The fire, whose cause is being investigated,
spread rapidly from the casino to the hotel
in the complex via a walkway.
The violence with which the flames spread made it difficult to evacuate and extinguish tasks, in which emergency teams and firefighters from neighboring Thailand participated.
Many of those affected are Thais who worked at the entertainment complex.
In videos published on social networks by witnesses,
a group of people trapped on the roof of the building can be seen,
some of whom decide to jump into the void to avoid the flames.
According to the images, others affected tried to descend through tied sheets hung from the windows and through emergency stairs.
Rescue teams had to use
helicopters to evacuate dozens of people
who had climbed onto the roof.
Police estimate that
hundreds of people were at the hotel and casino
at the time of the fire.
Poipet, a key city on the route that connects the Cambodian tourist city of Siem Reap and the Thai capital, is famous for the dozen casinos that sit near the Thai border, where gambling is illegal.
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