Tourist dies in Cambodia

PHNOM PENH - A GERMAN tourist has died in Cambodia's north-east after falling off a veranda and refusing hospital treatment, police said on Saturday.

Eye-witnesses told police that 65-year-old Klaus Dieter Rubloff had been waiting for a bus on a riverside veranda in Kratie province on Thursday when he fell three metres to the ground.

He was taken to the nearby provincial hospital with head and hand injuries but refused to stay there, wanting to travel instead to the capital Phnom Penh.

He was found dead the next morning at the guesthouse where he was staying.

'The tourist accidentally fell off the balcony. After he was sent to the hospital, he refused requests by the doctor and his two foreign friends to stay in the hospital,' said provincial police chief Chuong Seang Hak.

'His death was caused by the accident and his refusal to be hospitalised here,' he said. -- AFP