A member of a Thai rescue team said the fire quickly spread through the multi-storey casino hotel due to carpeting.
“About” ten people were killed in the night from Wednesday to Thursday in the fire of a casino hotel in Poipet (west), a Cambodian city on the border with Thailand, according to the Cambodian police.
The fire, which broke out around 11:30 p.m. at the Grand Diamond City Hotel and Casino, left “about ten dead and thirty injured”, according to a preliminary police report. Images posted on social networks showed the imposing complex ravaged by flames.
The injured have been sent to hospitals in the neighboring Thai province of Sa Kaeo, a source told the Thai Foreign Ministry.
“The authorities tried to control the fire, in particular with the help of fire engines from Thailand”, according to this source.
Several deadly fires in recent months
Some 400 people work at Grand Diamond City, Cambodian police said.
Foreign citizens were inside the building when the fire broke out, according to local media. Many casinos have spread to Poipet, where Thai customers flock to play legally, casinos being prohibited in Thailand.
In recent months, several deadly fires in night establishments, regularly suspected of not respecting basic safety rules, have broken out in Southeast Asia.
In August, a fire at a nightclub near Pattaya, Thailand, killed 26 people, mostly young locals who came to party. A month later, 32 people were killed in a karaoke bar fire in the suburbs of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
