Five jewelry shops in Kompong Thom province’s Stong district were robbed on Sunday afternoon by six unidentified men, including two armed with AK-47 rifles, district police said Monday.
Six men driving three motorcycles raided the jewelry shops in Stong Market in Kompong Chin Tbong commune, forcing the store owners to surrender 100 damlung worth of gold jewelry worth about $154,000, according to deputy district police chief Vorn Sorphon.
“The suspects used the weapons to break the display cases of all the five shops in order to frighten the sellers, but they didn’t fire the guns and no one got injured,” he said.
Mr. Sorphon added that police officers who patrol the market were not near the jewelry stores at the time of the raids and did not witness the crime.
Police, he said, chased the robbers until they reached the Tonle Sap lake, where they lost sight of the suspects.
“Now we have about 40 police officers surrounding the flooded forest trying to arrest them, even though it’s dangerous because there are a lot of snakes,” Mr. Sorphon said.
