Dragon Boat Races Return to Cambodian Capital for Water Festival

Pigeons fly past as participants row dragon boats during a competition as part of the Water Festival on the Tonle Sap river in Phnom Penh on November 26, 2023. (AFP)
Pigeons fly past as participants row dragon boats during a competition as part of the Water Festival on the Tonle Sap river in Phnom Penh on November 26, 2023. (AFP)
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Dragon Boat Races Return to Cambodian Capital for Water Festival

Pigeons fly past as participants row dragon boats during a competition as part of the Water Festival on the Tonle Sap river in Phnom Penh on November 26, 2023. (AFP)
Pigeons fly past as participants row dragon boats during a competition as part of the Water Festival on the Tonle Sap river in Phnom Penh on November 26, 2023. (AFP)

Tens of thousands of spectators thronged the riverfront in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh Sunday for an annual dragon boat race -- the centerpiece of the kingdom's three-day water festival, cancelled during the Covid pandemic.

Around 300 boats, their crews dressed in matching bright T-shirts, strained for the win as they dipped their colorful paddles into the Tonle Sap river with the royal palace behind them.

Cambodian King Norodom Sihamoni, Prime Minister Hun Manet, his father Hun Sen and senior government officials looked on as the yearly extravaganza began, with crowds urging the canoes over the final line.

Concerts, parades of lantern floats bedecked with colorful neon lights -- each representing a government ministry -- and fireworks are all part of the three-day festival that will last until Tuesday.

"I am happy that we can meet to celebrate the water festival," 38-year-old rower Hom Phos told AFP.

"I am so excited because it is our national festival."

The festival was last held in 2019, after which it was halted during the pandemic.

"During the Covid pandemic, everyone was worried about it, and we were not happy. But now we are happy again," fellow rower Yorn Vorn, 45, told AFP.

The festival marks the end of the rainy season when the Tonle Sap river, which joins the mighty Mekong River in front of the Royal Palace, reverses flow.

The celebrations turned deadly on the last day of the festival in 2010, when more than 350 people were killed in a stampede on an overcrowded bridge after panic spread over rumors it was about to collapse.

Then Prime Minister Hun Sen described the disaster as Cambodia's worst tragedy since the Khmer Rouge's 1975-1979 reign of terror, which killed up to a quarter of the population.



UN Puts 4th Century Gaza Monastery on Endangered Site List

The Saint Hilarion complex dates back to the fourth century. Mahmud HAMS / AFP/File
The Saint Hilarion complex dates back to the fourth century. Mahmud HAMS / AFP/File
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UN Puts 4th Century Gaza Monastery on Endangered Site List

The Saint Hilarion complex dates back to the fourth century. Mahmud HAMS / AFP/File
The Saint Hilarion complex dates back to the fourth century. Mahmud HAMS / AFP/File

The Saint Hilarion complex, one of the oldest monasteries in the Middle East, has been put on the UNESCO list of World Heritage sites in danger due to the war in Gaza, the body said Friday.
UNESCO said the site, which dates back to the fourth century, had been put on the endangered list at the demand of Palestinian authorities and cited the "imminent threats" it faced.
"It's the only recourse to protect the site from destruction in the current context," Lazare Eloundou Assomo, director of the UNESCO World Heritage Centre, told AFP, referring to the war sparked by Hamas's October 7 attack on Israel.
In December, the UNESCO Committee for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict decided to grant "provisional enhanced protection" -- the highest level of immunity established by the 1954 Hague Convention -- to the site.
UNESCO had then said it was "already concerned about the state of conservation of sites, before October 7, due to the lack of adequate policies to protect heritage and culture" in Gaza.
The Hamas attack on October 7 resulted in the deaths of 1,197 people in Israel, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Israel's retaliatory offensive against Hamas has killed at least 39,175 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run territory's health ministry, which does not give details of civilian and militant deaths.