The four attackers who took students at an international school in Cambodia hostage were nearly beaten to death by the frantic crowd which had gathered outside the complex as the drama came to an end, witnesses and footage showed yesterday.
Cambodian Luy Srey Nan, 26, who lives opposite the school in a thatched hut where security forces stored their weapons and food during the drama Thursday, said if police had not intervened the attackers would have been killed.
"If the police hadn't protected the hostage-takers who were inside the van they would have been killed by the crowd because they were being beaten so badly," she told reporters.
Police said yesterday the siege was the result of a botched revenge attack by the disgruntled former driver of a South Korean restaurateur who had struck him.
The attackers entered the school hoping to kill the South Korean's two children, but could not find them and became trapped when police surrounded the facility.
Video footage aired on Thai television showed members of an angry crowd kicking and trying to beat the suspects after they were dragged from their getaway vehicle, as authorities struggled to hold them back.
At least one suspect lay motionless on the bloodied ground, while another suffered serious head wounds and was bleeding profusely.
Police later said one of the four had been hospitalized.
A two-year-old Canadian boy was killed during the seven-hour standoff between security forces and the four hostage-takers, who were arrested after being mauled by the crowd.
Mob violence and extra-judicial killings are serious problems in impoverished Cambodia, where a culture of impunity is entrenched and the notoriously corrupt judicial system struggles to deliver any justice to crime victims.
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