Two women died and another person was seriously injured in a house fire on Thursday night in Phnom Penh’s Dangkao district, local police said.
The women, Oun Theary, 24, and Mom Sreypov, 23, died in the rental room they shared after a fire started at about 11 p.m., according to Kraing Pongro commune police chief Toem Bunthen.
Tieng Panha, 32, the son of the house’s owner, was seriously burned after he rescued another woman who rented a room in the house, the commune police chief said.
The third woman was not injured. All three women were garment workers employed at the Tak Sung factory in Kraing Pongro commune.
“The bodies [of the two workers] were entirely burned, and only their charred corpses remain,” Mr. Bunthen said on Friday. “We are sorrowful about the accident, but we don’t yet know the reason for the house fire.”
Dangkao district governor Nuth Puth Dara said he heard that the victims had attended Water Festival the night of their death and speculated that they might have been so sleepy that they did not wake up when the fire started.
“The workers slept deeply after they returned from visiting Water Festival,” he said.
