Police say the driver, who was not confirmed among the dead, was asleep when the crash occurred.
Published On 21 Nov 2025
A night bus crash in central Cambodia has killed 16 people and injured two dozen more after the bus plunged into a river, police and local reports say.
The bus was carrying 37 people from the northern Oddar Meanchey province to the capital, Phnom Penh, according to the Cambodian outlet Camboja News, when it crashed off a bridge and into a canal just after 3am (20:00 GMT) in Kampong Thom province on Thursday morning.
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Before the crash, the bus had stopped to pick up passengers in Cambodia’s top tourist destination of Siem Reap, home to the renowned Angkor Wat temple complex, located roughly six hours from Phnom Penh by vehicle.
Everyone on board was Cambodian, authorities said.
Police said that the driver, one of two who were alternating the night route, was believed to have been asleep when the incident occurred. It was not yet clear if the driver was among the dead.
Photos posted by Interior Minister Sar Sokha on Facebook showed the bus half-submerged in water as it was extracted by a crane.
The death toll rose from 13 to 16 overnight on Thursday after rescuers completed a search in the river, according to The Associated Press news agency. Injured passengers were taken to a provincial Kampong Thom hospital, while authorities transferred the bodies of the dead to their families in ambulances.
The National Road Safety Committee said it tallied nearly 700 road fatalities in the first half of 2025, a decrease from the nearly 800 reported over the same period the year prior.
