Truck transporting Cambodian garment workers crashes, leaving 61 injured

A truck transporting garment workers to their factory flipped onto its side in southwest Cambodia's Kampong Speu province on Tuesday, leaving 61 people injured, a provincial senior police official said.

The accident took place at 6:25am local time on National Road 4 in Samraong Tong district when the truck's driver rear-ended a car before crashing into a motorist, said Tab Lon, Kampong Speu provincial deputy police chief in charge of road traffic.

"The truck overturned and threw workers onto the street," he told Xinhua. "A total of 61 people, including 52 women, got injured in the crash, but none of them is in serious condition."

The injured people had been rushed to a nearby hospital, Lon said, adding that police were hunting the 34-year-old truck driver, who escaped the scene soon after the collision.

Transporting workers in open trucks to and from factories is common in the Southeast Asian country. Late last month, some 45 garment workers sustained injuries when their truck hit head-on with another truck from an opposition direction in central Kampong Chhnang province.

The country's multi-billion-US-dollar garment, footwear and travel products industry consists of about 1,680 factories, employing around 918,000 workers, mostly female, according to the Ministry of Labor.