CAMBODIA'S fragile experiment with democracy suffered a body blow on Saturday when attackers hurled grenades into a small demonstration the opposition leader, Mr Sam Rainsy, was leading outside the National Assembly in Phnom Penh, killing at least 12 people and injuring over 100.
Four grenades thought to have been thrown by two or three different attackers exploded in a crowd of 150-200 people attending an officially approved early morning demonstration organised by Mr Rainsy to protest against corruption and political interference with the judiciary.
The worst act of political violence since UN sponsored elections in 1993 left dead, dying and injured strewn outside parliament in pools of blood amid broken glass and the debris of broken placards, igniting a bitter war of words between Cambodia's leaders.
A bodyguard and a political aide of Mr Rainsy and two Cambodian journalists were reportedly killed. A Chinese reporter for Xinhua news agency was seriously injured and four other Cambodian reporters were among the wounded, along with Mr Ron Abner (55), an American working for the International Republican Institute on political training courses, who was hit by shrapnel in the thigh.
Speaking by telephone from his Phnom Penh home, Mr Rainsy said he presumed the "well coordinated, well planned attack" was an attempt to assassinate him and said it was "crystal clear" Cambodia's second Prime Minister, Mr Hun Sen, and his formerly communist Cambodian People's Party had ordered it.
"I think it is Mr Hun Sen who orders the units of police and army to conduct this attack," he said, "but the communist party is well disciplined so I think it's a collective decision of the party."
Mr Hun Sen angrily denied responsibility for the attack and said Mr Rainsy should be arrested for the violence, which resulted from what he described as an illegal demonstration. He said he would take steps to prevent him from leaving the country.
A senior government official and CPP member, Mr Khieu Kanharith, said 11 people were killed and 112 injured in the attack but added: "The CPP ... does not commit acts of violence against innocent people."
Mr Rainsy, a former finance minister turned vehement government critic who leads the small Khmer Nation Party, said he was thrown to the ground by a bodyguard after the explosion of a grenade. "This saved me, because a few seconds later there were other grenade explosions and I saw people falling because they had not [lain down]."
He said a bodyguard pursued a grenade thrower who ran into a unit of soldiers known to be directly commanded by Mr Hun Sen, but the soldiers halted him, "threatened him with weapons and even kicked him back."
At, a press conference, still wearing blood soaked clothes and spectacles with one lens cracked, Mr Rainsy said "that bloody guy" Mr, Hun Sen should be arrested and sentenced for the attack.
"There isn't anyone who doesn't suspect who's behind it, but there's no proof of anything," a western observer in Phno Penh said, pointing to the boldness of this daylight attack and to previous grenade attacks on Mr Hun Sen's critics. "I don't expect any investigation to come up with anybody because it's likely to lead back to a place where they don't, want to go," he said.
The carnage, however, has also raised fears of escalating violence in the run up to local elections due later this year and assembly elections due in 1998. Mounting tensions between Mr Hun Sen and co Prime Minister Prince Norodom Ranariddh's royalist party Funcinpec have erupted in recent weeks into clashes between military units loyal to the rival parties.