In the coming years, the Water Festival at Diamond Island will unlikely carry the traditional festive mood; instead it may become a time of mourning of this year's stampede, a tragedy that consumed at least 375 lives and injured more than 700 others.

People stand near the bodies of the stampede victims in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Nov. 23, 2010. At least 339 people were killed in a stampede on Monday night as millions of Cambodians celebrated the annual water festival in the capital Phnom Penh, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen said on state TV early Tuesday. The accident took place on a bridge that connects the city with the Diamond Island which has become the center of celebrations. [Xinhua/Phearum]

The three-day festival, on the full moon days of the Buddhist month of Kadeuk (usually in November), celebrates a major natural occurrence: the reversing flow between the Tonle Sap and the Mekong River.

It is seen as the largest and most exuberant festival in Cambodia, as people from provinces and rural areas will come all the way to the capital city and take part in all kinds of celebrations from fluvial parades, dragon boat races, fireworks to general merriment. The turnout is usually large, and this year the officials had estimated 3 million people from all over the country would fill Phnom Penh up.

The Diamond Island, in the Bassac River neighboring the capital city, became a new eye-catching destination of them since it was the first time that the shiny, modern entertainment complex opened to the public during the festival.

Nobody thought about whether the 8-meter-wide, 100-meter-long bridge is capable of such a big pedestrian flow. So Monday night around 9:30 p.m., when some rumor triggered panic, the tightly packed crowd who tried to flee found themselves trapped on the bridge desperately. As more and more people struggled to rush toward the exit, hundreds were suffocated, trampled, or drowned to death after they jumped into the river.

While this is not the time to finger pointing, but a tragedy of this degree of seriousness and with a high toll in lost of lives, deserves a detailed, complete and transparent investigation to prevent future occurrences.