Jealous lover kills 9, injures 30 at Cambodian wedding

[News_Editor]

By Tashauna Thompson

PHNOM PENH, CAMBODIA (BNO NEWS) -- Nine people were killed Saturday and 30 others were injured when a man believed to be in love with the bride-to-be threw a hand grenade at a wedding reception in central Cambodia, military officials said on Sunday. The attacker fled the scene.

The incident occurred at around 9:30 p.m. local time on Saturday when a man threw a grenade at dancing guests at a wedding ceremony in Prasat Sambo, a district in central Kampong Thom province, approximately 170 kilometers (105.6 miles) north of the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh.

Provincial military police chief General Horm Thul told the Xinhua news agency that nine people were killed and 30 others were injured, some of them critically. "It was not a terrorism act. We preliminarily concluded that a love triangle motivated the attack," he was quoted as saying, adding that the victims were rushed to Kampong Thom Provincial Hospital

Two young girls aged 7 and 14 were among those killed, Thul added.

(Copyright 2014 by BNO News B.V. All rights reserved. Info: [email protected].)

[Scott]

Moved to Cambodian news section.

[geovalin]

11 dead at this time

Grenade kills 11 at wedding

Mon, 27 January 2014

May Titthara, Stuart White and Cheang Sokha

Kampong Thom province

Sixteen-year-old Boeun Soky’s downcast eyes were fixated on a sheaf of plastic-wrapped photos, which she distractedly shuffled as she sat in front of her family’s home in Kampong Thom’s Prasat Sambor district.

The young man in the photos was Soky’s fiance. The couple planned to marry in March, a plan that will now go unfulfilled after her husband-to-be was killed in a grenade attack on a neighbour’s pre-wedding party in Prasat Sambor district on Saturday night.

“One year,” she said in a strained voice – the amount of time the two were engaged.

According to hospital staff, 11 people were killed and 33 injured in the night-time attack, and police said yesterday that they had arrested a 24-year-old suspect who had an argument with the groom a few days before the party.

“It is one of the most shocking events to ever happen in the province,” provincial military police commander Hang Thol said.

Provincial deputy police commissioner Ker Khannara, who investigated the case, declined to name the suspect, but said that he and the groom had been involved in an argument on Wednesday. Village authorities had mediated the dispute, Khannara said, but the suspect had been unsatisfied with the resolution.

“It is an attempted murder, because the attacker had a plan already,” Khannara said. “The groom and bride were also injured in the attack.”

Some of the wounded were being treated at the 515 Kampong Thom Clinic in Kampong Thom town, where they stretched out on sheets dotted with rust-coloured bloodstains as family members fussed over their blankets.

Outside, staffers mopped off the hospital’s ambulance gurneys.

Lying in her hospital bed on what was meant to be her wedding day, bride-to-be Phoeun Sophal, 20, said she was baffled by the motives behind the attack.

“I don’t know who did this to me, because my family never had any argument with the neighbours,” she said, her leg in a blood-stained plaster cast with a nearby X-ray showing a serious fracture.

Sitting beside his injured fiancee, would-be groom Chear Chak, 22, said that about 100 people had been dancing when the bomb went off. It was only after he located Sophal in the ensuing confusion that Chak realised he had been wounded himself. “After the bomb [detonated], I ran to carry my wife away, because she was injured on her right leg, and I didn’t know I was injured until I saw the blood on my hand,” he said.

Chak was also unsure of the reason for the attack, saying he was “heartbroken” but would reorganise his wedding “after we get better”.

Guest Morn Cithy, 27, lost her father in the attack, while her mother, two sisters and two brothers were all injured.

“I was the lucky one in my family to not get injured, because at that time, I was just standing and laughing at my father dancing,” she said.

Cithy said she was at a loss as to how to deal with the catastrophe. Unable to afford a funeral, she had to bury her father in the jungle late yesterday afternoon.

At the home where the celebration took place, there was little to indicate it had been the site of a bloody attack the evening before. Some decorations, trampled into the dirt, were the only sign there had been a party at all.

Standing under the raised house, Sophal’s mother, San Mom, 42, said chaos had erupted after the grenade went off, with partygoers running in all directions, searching for family members.

“After the sound of the bomb, a lot of people fell down, and a lot of people got injured,” she said. “I really pity my daughter, because I have only one daughter, and it was the first time that my family had to organise a marriage party, but she could not get married.

“You know, today a lot of guests came to attend her wedding, but all the guests became sad when they reached my house, because all they saw were the bodies,” she added.

http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/grenade-kills-11-wedding

[Chicog]

“It is an attempted murder, because the attacker had a plan already,” Khannara said.

No, it's murder. 11 people were killed.