As families struggled to cope with the trauma of a hostage ordeal at an international school in Cambodia, police extended their questioning of four suspects yesterday, delaying their court appearance.
Police said they were trying to determine if others were involved in Thursday's school attack, in which a two-year-old Canadian boy was killed.
The alleged ringleader, 23-year-old Chea Sokhom, had been scheduled to face charges in court yesterday over the incident in Siem Reap, near the famed Angkor Wat temple complex.
PHOTO: AP
But authorities decided to delay his court appearance by at least a day because they needed more time to interrogate him, said Ou Em, head of Siem Reap Province's police serious crime division.
"There are questions we need more time to look into, because he seems to have something to hide," Ou Em said. "There are some inconsistencies between his answers so far and what happened at the scene."
One question was why the hostage-takers demanded six guns, when only four men were found and arrested at the end of the crisis.
"You wonder about this, and so do I -- if there were two other men out there," Ou Em told reporters.
He said the four men will be charged with premeditated murder and kidnapping. The penalties for both range from 20 years to life in prison.
Chea Sokhom has said he had planned the raid as revenge against a South Korean man who had employed him as a driver, according to Prak Chanthoeun, the province's military police deputy commander.
Chea Sokhom said he had been humiliated when his employer struck him in a fit of anger, so he quit and planned to kill the man's two daughters. He had previously driven them to the school each day.
However, police have described the four as petty criminals with no purpose beyond extorting money. They also have arrested a fifth suspect, but his connection to the case was unclear.
Meanwhile, psychologists were encouraging people affected by the incident to undergo counseling. About 30 children, ranging from age two to six and coming from several different nations, were held hostage.
Five foreign psychologists who flew in after the crisis and three Cambodian health workers have set up a makeshift center at a Siem Reap restaurant to help the children and their parents.
"These are parents of young children, who for six hours have experienced extreme fear and despair," said Bart Janssens, medical coordinator for the group Medecins sans Frontieres, who came from Phnom Penh.
"The fact that their children have been witnessing such a high level of violence must have caused a high level of distress, and we hope we can give some answers immediately," Janssens said.
The attackers, armed with a single handgun, stormed Siem Reap International School on Thursday morning. They took students and teachers hostage and demanded money, weapons and a vehicle.
One of the attackers, apparently tense and impatient because the demands weren't being met quickly, reportedly told police he shot the Canadian toddler because he was crying more than the other children.
The ordeal ended when police cornered the van in which the attackers tried to escape, together with several child hostages and a reported US$30,000 given to them by negotiators.
A beauty queen who pulled out of the Miss South Africa competition when her nationality was questioned has said she wants to relocate to Nigeria, after coming second in the Miss Universe pageant while representing the West African country. Chidimma Adetshina, whose father is Nigerian, was crowned Miss Universe Africa and Oceania and was runner-up to Denmark’s Victoria Kjar Theilvig in Mexico on Saturday night. The 23-year-old law student withdrew from the Miss South Africa competition in August, saying that she needed to protect herself and her family after the government alleged that her mother had stolen the identity of a South
BELT-TIGHTENING: Chinese investments in Cambodia are projected to drop to US$35 million in 2026 from more than US$420 million in 2021 At a ceremony in August, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet knelt to receive blessings from saffron-robed monks as fireworks and balloons heralded the breaking of ground for a canal he hoped would transform his country’s economic fortunes. Addressing hundreds of people waving the Cambodian flag, Hun Manet said China would contribute 49 percent to the funding of the Funan Techo Canal that would link the Mekong River to the Gulf of Thailand and reduce Cambodia’s shipping reliance on Vietnam. Cambodia’s government estimates the strategic, if contentious, infrastructure project would cost US$1.7 billion, nearly 4 percent of the nation’s annual GDP. However, months later,
HOPEFUL FOR PEACE: Zelenskiy said that the war would ‘end sooner’ with Trump and that Ukraine must do all it can to ensure the fighting ends next year Russia’s state-owned gas company Gazprom early yesterday suspended gas deliveries via Ukraine, Vienna-based utility OMV said, in a development that signals a fast-approaching end of Moscow’s last gas flows to Europe. Russia’s oldest gas-export route to Europe, a pipeline dating back to Soviet days via Ukraine, is set to shut at the end of this year. Ukraine has said it would not extend the transit agreement with Russian state-owned Gazprom to deprive Russia of profits that Kyiv says help to finance the war against it. Moscow’s suspension of gas for Austria, the main receiver of gas via Ukraine, means Russia now only
‘HARD-HEADED’: Some people did not evacuate to protect their property or because they were skeptical of the warnings, a disaster agency official said Typhoon Man-yi yesterday slammed into the Philippines’ most populous island, with the national weather service warning of flooding, landslides and huge waves as the storm sweeps across the archipelago nation. Man-yi was still packing maximum sustained winds of 185kph after making its first landfall late on Saturday on lightly populated Catanduanes island. More than 1.2 million people fled their homes ahead of Man-yi as the weather forecaster warned of a “life-threatening” effect from the powerful storm, which follows an unusual streak of violent weather. Man-yi uprooted trees, brought down power lines and smashed flimsy houses to pieces after hitting Catanduanes in the typhoon-prone
RSS