Siem Reap, Cambodia – Masked gunmen burst into an international school near Cambodia’s famed Angkor Wat temples Thursday, taking dozens of toddlers hostage and killing a 2-year-old Canadian boy who they said cried too much. Police overpowered the attackers as they tried to escape after a six- hour standoff.
Furious and weeping parents outside the school took their revenge, bloodying three of the four hostage-takers and beating at least one unconscious before police pulled them away.
The attackers, motivated by a desire for money, barged into the school about 9:30 a.m. and herded a teacher and almost 30 nursery-school-age children into a classroom in one of the school’s two buildings.
Scores of other children – from as many as 15 countries, including the United States – managed to hide or scramble from the grounds. It was not known if any American children were held hostage. A U.S. Embassy spokesman in the Cambodian capital declined to comment.
Parents rushed to the school and waited with soldiers and police as authorities negotiated with the attackers.
As the hours stretched on, the occasional sound of captive children crying could be heard from inside the school grounds beyond a small, empty playground.
The attackers demanded money, weapons and a vehicle, and Cambodian officials partially complied, delivering $30,000 and a van.
The attackers got into the van along with four children, but as they prepared to drive off, security forces closed the school gate and stormed the vehicle, dragging the men out, military police officer Prak Chanthoeun said.
Some parents charged the hostage-takers.
“Those parents beat and kicked those men because they were very outraged by them. We could barely control the angry crowd,” the officer said. “One foreigner threw several hard kicks to the head of one of those men.”
Other parents were seen grabbing their children and dashing away from the schoolyard.
The gang’s leader, identified as Khum, later told police he had shot the Canadian toddler in the head, Chanthoeun said. “This man admitted he shot the child because the child was crying a lot,” he said.
Denis Richer, a Frenchman who teaches at another school in the town, identified the dead boy as Michaelka Maxyme and said he tried to comfort the father.
“I asked him, ‘What can I do now?’ He was completely lost,” Richer said.
After the captors were taken into custody, police discovered that the hostage-takers had had only one gun among them, Chanthoeun said.
The captors told police they were penniless and “decided to do that to the foreign children because they believed their families are rich,” said Chanthoeun, who described them as small- town gangsters.
