Five dead found in Vietnam bridge collapse, death toll raised to 56

Sep 27, 2007, 10:11 GMT

Hanoi - Rescuers have pulled five more bodies from the site of a bridge collapse in Vietnam's Mekong Delta and are searching through mountains of concrete and steel in hopes of finding survivors, officials said Thursday.

Some 500 police, military, doctors and volunteers were working in the rain Thursday at the site of the collapse of the Can Tho Bridge construction project in southern Vinh Long province that has killed at least 56 people.

'There are still about 30 or 40 people trapped in the rubble and rescuers are continuing to cut the steel and concrete,' said Nguyen Mong Tua, deputy chief of police in the province.

'We aren't hearing any voices of victims anymore,' Tua added, raising the possibility that trapped workers had died of their injuries.

He said it could take one or two weeks for workers to move the large slabs of concrete.

More than 250 workers were on the 100-metre-long section of the Can Tho Bridge when it collapsed Wednesday morning, sending tons of concrete tumbling at least 30 metres to the banks of the Hau River, a tributary of the Mekong River.

At least 100 workers were pulled alive from the mountains of concrete and steel and rushed to hospital.

No cause for the collapse has been named but investigators were looking into whether supporting scaffolding might have been too weak and heavy rains had loosened the ground beneath it.

Construction on the 343-million-dollar Can Tho Bridge, touted as South-East Asia's longest cable bridge, began in 2004 with Japanese funding and was slated for completion next year.

The bridge was designed to offer an alternative to river ferries that now carry some 87,000 passengers and 20,000 cars daily across the Hau River, a tributary of the Mekong, between Can Tho and Vinh Long provinces.