One Vietnamese, not two as initially announced, and seven Chinese died in a fire at a nightclub under renovation in Cambodia’s capital Phnom Penh last weekend, Cambodian newspaper Khmer Times reported Tuesday, citing local police.

Both Khmer Times and China’s Global Times on Monday reported that two Vietnamese were among the eight victims, but in its update report on Tuesday, Khmer Times named only one Vietnamese in the list of the fatalities. 

The Vietnamese victim has been identified as Tran Ngoc Tan, 28 years old, and all the seven others were Chinese, aged from 23 to 30, according to Khmer Times.   

The fire broke out at around 5:00 pm last Saturday on the fifth floor of the ‘6969’ nightclub in Phnom Penh’s Khan Tuol Kouk District, as the victims were renovating the building’s interior, the Khmer Times said.

Firefighters quickly arrived at the scene but they were unable to rescue the eight victims as they were “trapped in a high part of the building,” the newspaper cited Col. Prohm Yorn, director of the city’s Fire Prevention and Rescue Police Office, as saying. 

These victims, who were construction workers, reportedly died of suffocation during the blaze, which took several hours for firefighters to stamp out, Phnom Penh City police spokesman San Sok Seiha said.

The fire might have resulted from a short circuit, he added, citing initial investigations.

Local police have begun investigating the cause of the incident and arrested four suspects, who were working in the building at the time of the fire, the spokesman informed.

The eight bodies have been handed over to their families for traditional rites, while the four suspects are being held in the city’s Toul Kork Police Inspectorate for questioning, Khmer Times reported.

According to Cambodia’s National Committee for Disaster Management, the Southeast Asian country recorded 454 fires nationwide in 2022, with 42 people killed and 55 injured.

In December, a major fire killed 26 people at the Grand Diamond City hotel-casino complex in Poipet, a Cambodian town bordering Thailand, the committee said.

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