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.
A US YouTuber who caused outrage for filming himself kissing a statue commemorating Korean wartime sex slaves has been sentenced to six months in prison, a court in Seoul said yesterday. Johnny Somali, 25, gained notoriety several years ago for recording himself doing a series of provocative stunts in South Korea and Japan, and streaming them on platforms such as YouTube and Twitch. South Korean authorities indicted Somali — whose real name is Ramsey Khalid Ismael — in 2024 on public order violations and obstruction of business, and banned him from leaving the country. “The court has sentenced him to six months in
Former Lima mayor Rafael Lopez Aliaga, a Peruvian presidential hopeful, gathered hundreds of supporters in Lima on Tuesday and gave authorities 24 hours to annul the first round of the country’s election over allegations of fraud. Lopez Aliaga is locked in a tight three-way race with two other candidates for second place in Sunday’s vote. The election runner-up wins a ticket to June’s presidential run-off against front-runner Keiko Fujimori. “I am giving them 24 hours to declare this electoral fraud null and void,” said Lopez Aliaga, surrounded by a crowd of several hundred supporters. “If it is not declared null and void tomorrow,
PAPAL RETORT: Pope Leo told reporters that he has ‘no fear, neither of the Trump administration nor speaking out loudly about the message of the Gospel’ US President Donald Trump has feuded with Pope Leo XIV over the Iran conflict — setting off an unholy row that could have serious political implications for the Republican leader back in the US. Trump has drawn barbs even from some allies over the attacks on the US-born pontiff, who has criticized the Trump administration over its immigration crackdown, the intervention in Venezuela and the Iran war. The president risks alienating the religious right in November’s crucial US midterm elections. So far the unprecedented clash between the leader of the most powerful military on Earth and the head of the world’s 1.4 billion
A 16-year-old boy has been charged with murder and aggravated sexual abuse in Florida in the death of his 18-year-old stepsister on a Carnival Cruise ship, the US Department of Justice said on Monday. Timothy Hudson was initially charged in February and subsequently indicted on March 10, but the breadth of the case was not known until a seal was lifted on Friday last week, weeks after US District Judge Beth Bloom in Miami said that he would be prosecuted as an adult at the request of the government. Anna Kepner had been traveling on the Carnival Horizon ship in November last
RSS