A Mondulkiri province family’s quiet night together came to a tragic and abrupt end on Tuesday when a lightning bolt struck and killed their 10-year-old daughter and injured her 12-year-old sister.

The two girls were lying inside the family’s Pech Chreada district home next to the window, using a mobile phone to play music to which they and their parents were singing along, said Romas Man, father of the two victims.

“Then, my oldest daughter [Man Ravy] screamed and cried for help, shouting that an electric wire had shocked her, and then she fell unconscious,” Man said yesterday. “But my youngest daughter, Man Lit, she died immediately; her body was bruised all over.”

Ravy was rushed from the family’s house in Bousraa commune to Mondulkiri’s provincial hospital, said Pech Chreada district police chief Sao Sovannarith. The family had to take her themselves, because the lightning strike disabled their phone, he said.

The 12-year-old girl remains hospitalised, but is recovering quickly, Sovannarith added.

“She is under the treatment of specialist doctors at Mondulkiri Provincial Hospital right now,” he said. “Man Ravy is awake and is responding normally, cognitively and emotionally.”

Nasty weather also had disastrous effects elsewhere this week. In neighbouring Ratanakkiri province, 66 houses in Kon Mom district’s Teun and Ta Ong communes were damaged by a rainstorm early yesterday morning, local authorities said.

Three men and two women were injured in storm-related incidents there.