Five Cambodian schoolgirls drowned Tuesday morning when their bus skidded off a road and sank in a pond north of Phnom Penh.
The crash occurred in Khsach Kandal district, Kandal province, roughly 25 miles from the capital, according to a statement posted on Facebook by provincial police. The bus was transporting 26 students aged 12 to 14 to school when the accident happened.
Witnesses told police that a motorcycle suddenly crossed in front of the fast-moving bus. The driver slammed on the brakes, causing the vehicle to skid into roadside water. Video shared on social media showed the bus sank just feet from shore, but the depth made escape extremely difficult even with help from villagers who rushed to the scene.
Sun Kunthy, one of the rescuers who ran to assist, said villagers performed CPR on some of the children they managed to pull from the submerged bus. Nov Sokhon, chief traffic police of Khsach Kandal district, confirmed all five girls died by drowning. He added that the death toll could have been even higher without the swift rescue efforts by local residents.
Three students remained in critical condition following the crash, while 18 others sustained light injuries. Police detained the 31-year-old bus driver for questioning.
The tragedy highlights Cambodia’s persistent crisis of road deaths. A National Police report released in early November found traffic accidents killed more than 1,300 people across the country in the first 10 months of this year. A separate Transport Ministry report recorded 1,467 traffic fatalities in 2024, making road crashes by far the leading cause of accidental death in the Southeast Asian nation.
Industrial transport has proven especially deadly. In May this year, two accidents in a single day killed at least 14 garment factory workers and injured 79 others, most of them women. They had been riding on flatbed trucks, the standard transportation available for workers. These vehicles frequently lack seats or benches, forcing passengers to stand and dramatically increasing injury and death risks when crashes occur.
The Kandal province crash follows this pattern of dangerous mass transport, though the school bus involved was a conventional vehicle rather than an open truck. The proximity of the pond to the roadway turned what might have been a routine braking incident into a fatal submersion.
Cambodia’s traffic fatality rate has long ranked among Southeast Asia’s highest, with inadequate vehicle maintenance, poor road conditions, and weak enforcement of safety regulations contributing to the toll. The reliance on improvised transport for both students and workers continues to put vulnerable populations at risk.
The detained driver faces continued police questioning as investigators examine whether speed or other factors contributed to the bus’s loss of control.