World

Hundreds Missing After Nepal Bridge Collapse

by Rob Walker | December 25, 2007 at 05:21 am

2315 views | 7 Recommendations | 5 comments

This is the last thing you want to hear about during the holidays...

A suspension bridge overloaded with as many as 1,000 people attending a
Hindu religious festival collapsed Tuesday, sending most of them into
the raging river in a remote region of Nepal, according to Nepalese
police.

Between 400 and 500 people who were on the bridge are now missing, while only 11 bodies have been recovered hours later, police said.

"The bridge collapsed because there were hundreds of people on it," said Nepal police officer Nibandha Budha. "They had gone to the river for a three-day Hindu religious festival on the occasion of full moon."

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Rob Walker

at 05:46 on December 25th, 2007

This story is breaking and will now show up on the home page for four hours. If new developments justify it, I'll renew this flag for another cycle.

Vinny

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 06:17 on December 25th, 2007

denseatoms

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 19:22 on December 25th, 2007

Even Westerners who've become jaded with the action-film cliché of cutting the cables on a high-suspension pedestrian bridge will be horrified to read this story.

chhetriishwor

at 19:28 on December 27th, 2007

50 people who are believed to have drowned in a river in western Nepal of Veri Zone after a bridge they were on collapsed
So far sixteen people have been confirmed dead. A government official says recovery workers were expanding their search further down the river. The bodies of 15 people have already been recovered from the river while one more died on the way to a hospital.
Some 500 people were traveling to a fair and were crossing the bridge when its support cables snapped under their weight.

chhetriishwor has contributed a photo to this story.