(AFP) – Sep 26, 2007

MY HOA COMMUNE, Vietnam (AFP) — Rescuers were Thursday desperately digging for workers trapped under a collapsed bridge in southern Vietnam as the total number killed in the disaster remained unclear.

President Nguyen Minh Triet said 43 people died and 79 were injured when the bridge being built in My Hoa commune or village collapsed on Wednesday morning sending concrete slabs crashing to the ground.

Authorities feared the toll could rise and Tran Thanh Quang, head of Hospital 121 where the dead were sent, said late Thursday afternoon he had already "received a total of 46" bodies.

Police and state television, however, had reported Wednesday that 52 people had been killed, with as many as 250 labourers and engineers working at the site at the time of the accident in Vinh Long province.

Confusion over the number of victims came as workers used shovels and picks to try to reach about 12 people buried under the concrete blocks in a frustratingly slow rescue operation.

"We cannot cut the concrete blocks," said Nguyen Van Tien, vice-construction inspector at the labour ministry.

"We are afraid the concrete slabs will continue to collapse, killing those who are still buried underneath. Therefore, we have to use simple equipment like shovels and soil picks to remove the slabs," he said.

Part of the 16-kilometre-long (10-mile) bridge being built across the Hau river to link Can Tho and Vinh Long provinces suddenly gave way early Wednesday in the nation's worst bridge accident.

Concrete, large iron rods and other debris remain scattered over about 40 metres.

Army and police have sealed off the site as hundreds of people -- many friends and relatives of the victims -- waited anxiously nearby, hoping for news of their loves ones.

Others have besieged hospitals to try to discover if they were alive and being treated for injuries.

Workers who managed to escape the collapsing bridge expressed relief, but said they feared for their trapped colleagues.

"I don't think there are opportunities for the missing ones to survive. If we found them, they would have already died," said 45-year-old Tran Viet Lung.

Nguyen Thi Sinh, 52, was prepared for the worst, expecting the body of her 35-year-old brother to be brought from the rubble.

"I have been waiting here since Wednesday morning. I don't think my brother could survive, so I only expect we could bring back his body for a proper burial," she said in tears.

"My brother was the main labourer in his family", she said, added that he earned only 55,000 dong (3.4 dollars) a day.

"We really don't know how to continue our life as the accident came so sudden," Sinh said, adding her brother's pregnant wife was in "great shock".

Construction of the bridge started in September 2004 and, according to online newspaper VNExpress, was supposed to have been completed next year.

Funding for project mostly came from the Japanese government. State media said Japanese ambassador Norio Hattori had sent a letter of condolences to President Triet.

Takuro Takeuchi, a spokesman for the state-backed Japan Bank for International Cooperation, said Japan was looking into the accident.

"The head of the bank's branch office in Hanoi has arrived at the site and is trying to figure out what is going on," Takeuchi told AFP, adding the Vietnamese government was however best suited to determine the cause of the disaster.

President Triet said once the disaster was over, construction would continue. "We have to stabilise the situation," he said.

"The project must be continued."

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