Buddhist monks, who are sworn to shun all violence, fired metal balls from slingshots and threw burning gasoline bottles at each other as a long-simmering conflict erupted into fighting at a temple in northwestern Cambodia, officials said yesterday.
The "monks' war," which resulted in a number of injuries, broke out Thursday at Russey pagoda in the northwestern province of Battambang, said Pel Kosal, a local deputy police chief.
He said the violence followed more than two years of conflict between two temple factions over the selection of a new committee to manage the temple's affairs and funds. Each side has about 20 monks.
The rivalry began when the pagoda's abbot, 34-year-old So Youwath, accused a layman at the temple of corruption and tried to bar him from running for the committee's top job.
"I am used to seeing drunken men fighting, but here we had tea-drinking monks involved in a fight. It's strange and degrading for Buddhism in our country," Pel Kosal said.
He said authorities had asked both sides to leave the temple after the conflict began in mid-2002. One faction, headed by the unidentified layman, initially agreed to go but decided to stay on after So Youwath ignored the request.
The two sides engaged in periodic clashes but on Thursday "they just got nastier. They threw stones, fired slingshots, threw burning gasoline bottles at each other," Pel Kosal said by telephone from Battambang.
One civilian and seven monks were injured, one seriously, while fire caused damage to some parts of the temple.
All monks were evicted from the temple grounds following the clash.
So Youwath said in a telephone interview that one of his supporters suffered a twisted ankle and another coughed blood after he was beaten by opponents.
"Five monks on my side were wounded. Some of them bled from their heads after they were hit by slingshot balls," he said, adding that he suffered cuts from broken glass.
He claimed that his side did not engage in violence and blamed his opponents for starting the incident, "which was like a war."
But the abbot said he and his supporters had stocked up on wooden staves to guard themselves against their rivals.
The pagoda is now closed to its former occupants pending action by the government and is being guarded by about 30 policemen, said Pel Kosal.
Battambang's provincial capital is situated about 250km northwest of the capital Phnom Penh.
DOUBLE-MURDER CASE: The officer told the dispatcher he would check the locations of the callers, but instead headed to a pizzeria, remaining there for about an hour A New Jersey officer has been charged with misconduct after prosecutors said he did not quickly respond to and properly investigate reports of a shooting that turned out to be a double murder, instead allegedly stopping at an ATM and pizzeria. Franklin Township Police Sergeant Kevin Bollaro was the on-duty officer on the evening of Aug. 1, when police received 911 calls reporting gunshots and screaming in Pittstown, about 96km from Manhattan in central New Jersey, Hunterdon County Prosecutor Renee Robeson’s office said. However, rather than responding immediately, prosecutors said GPS data and surveillance video showed Bollaro drove about 3km
Tens of thousands of people on Saturday took to the streets of Spain’s eastern city of Valencia to mark the first anniversary of floods that killed 229 people and to denounce the handling of the disaster. Demonstrators, many carrying photos of the victims, called on regional government head Carlos Mazon to resign over what they said was the slow response to one of Europe’s deadliest natural disasters in decades. “People are still really angry,” said Rosa Cerros, a 42-year-old government worker who took part with her husband and two young daughters. “Why weren’t people evacuated? Its incomprehensible,” she said. Mazon’s
‘MOTHER’ OF THAILAND: In her glamorous heyday in the 1960s, former Thai queen Sirikit mingled with US presidents and superstars such as Elvis Presley The year-long funeral ceremony of former Thai queen Sirikit started yesterday, with grieving royalists set to salute the procession bringing her body to lie in state at Bangkok’s Grand Palace. Members of the royal family are venerated in Thailand, treated by many as semi-divine figures, and lavished with glowing media coverage and gold-adorned portraits hanging in public spaces and private homes nationwide. Sirikit, the mother of Thai King Vajiralongkorn and widow of the nation’s longest-reigning monarch, died late on Friday at the age of 93. Black-and-white tributes to the royal matriarch are being beamed onto towering digital advertizing billboards, on
With much pomp and circumstance, Cairo is today to inaugurate the long-awaited Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), widely presented as the crowning jewel on authorities’ efforts to overhaul the country’s vital tourism industry. With a panoramic view of the Giza pyramids plateau, the museum houses thousands of artifacts spanning more than 5,000 years of Egyptian antiquity at a whopping cost of more than US$1 billion. More than two decades in the making, the ultra-modern museum anticipates 5 million visitors annually, with never-before-seen relics on display. In the run-up to the grand opening, Egyptian media and official statements have hailed the “historic moment,” describing the
RSS