27 Killed in Assault on Cambodian Village; U.N. Suspects Khmer Rouge
Twenty-seven people were killed Wednesday night in a rifle-and-rocket attack on a village in central Cambodia, U.N. officials said today.
“It looks like the DK,” a U.N. official said, using the initials for Democratic Kampuchea, the formal name of the Maoist Khmer Rouge guerrilla group.
The attack took place in Kompong Thom province north of Phnom Penh.
The official said initial reports indicated that the murdered villagers were ethnic Cambodians.
Ethnic Vietnamese have been the main target of attacks in Cambodia since the four warring factions signed a peace agreement in October, 1991.
They were the principal victims of two massacres last month. Those killings brought to 103 the number known killed in violence directed against ethnic Vietnamese since the peace pact.
The Khmer Rouge guerrillas, a signatory of the pact, have been blamed for most of the murders.
The violence spread to Phnom Penh this week with a series of grenade attacks that killed three people and injured 29.
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