Police have detained four people for questioning in relation to Wednesday’s two hotel bomb blasts that killed three people and injured at least 11, police sources said Thursday.
Police declined to name the nationalities of the four and said they have not officially been declared suspects.
Municipal Police Chief Moung Khim said sweeps of the Hong Kong and Favour Hotels Thursday found no remaining bombs. The first blast at the Hong Kong took place at 11 am, while the second explosion at the Favour Hotel went off at just after noon Wednesday.
Police had been told by a caller on Wednesday that a third blast was imminent.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Hun Sen said at a ground-breaking ceremony for a pagoda in Kompong Speu province Thursday that the explosions were a “small thing” compared to violent events that have happened outside of Cambodia.
“In those countries, a 30-floor building was destroyed by a 300-kg bomb, but there was nothing [in the press],” the premier said in a speech broadcast on Bayon Radio. “On the contrary, in our country a smaller thing happens and foreign media like CNN and BBC broadcast the event.
“But as it did happen, we have to try to fix what has been damaged. This event in our country is not as serious as when the country was at war….I do not believe that our country is troubled by this [terrorist] event.”
Sau Phan, deputy national police chief, said authorities do not yet know if the bombings were motivated by politics or personal revenge.
Police have described the explosions as an act of extortion. A call to the Favour Hotel that took place 20 minutes before the second blast on Wednesday demanded $200,000 to prevent a bomb from being detonated.
Callers to the Favour after the blasts also demanded large sums of cash. A number of callers spoke to police claiming to belong to a group called Maria. Some people spoke with accents common in provinces along the western border with Thailand, police said.
Thav Kimlong, owner of the Favour, first deputy governor of Kompong Cham province and a former top adviser to Funcinpec co-Minister of Interior You Hockry, said he could not say if the blasts were motivated by politics.
One of the people who spoke to police by phone after the second blast said he wanted You Hockry to take part in negotiations.
Thav Kimlong said You Hockry visited the bomb sites Thursday, but only looked at the damaged buildings through his car window.
Four floors of the Favour were completely destroyed, said Thav Kimlong. Some of the dead were taken from hotel Thursday.
The two dead men, both 30 years-old and relatives of Thav Kimlong, were buried in a Chinese ceremony Thursday. The female housekeeper was cremated in a Buddhist ceremony at Wat Langka Thursday morning, according to Thav Kimlong.
National Assembly President Prince Norodom Ranariddh said at the assembly Thursday that the media and politicians should leave it to the police to find the motive for the attack. He said the attacks have made foreign tourists and investors nervous about security and called on the government to make a serious investigation.
“I want the authorities…to tell the national and international public about the attacks as soon as possible,” he said.
Members of a delegation of Americans from Lowell, in the state of Massachusetts, had been staying at the Favour. Although none were in the building for explosion, the group had rented five rooms on the fourth floor, where the blast took place.
“We just spent the week hearing how safe Cambodia is,” said Martha Rzepala, who teaches Cambodian-American school children in Lowell.
Mark Cote stayed at the Princess Hotel, a few blocks away from the Favour on Monivong Boulevard, on Thursday night. Gun shots fired outside after midnight frightened him, sending him to his hotel room floor to take cover.
“Last week, we were big shots. We had military escorts and a meeting with Hun Sen,” he said. “Now, some of us are trying to get out of here.”
(Additional reporting by Matt Reed, Lor Chandara and Matt McKinney)
