Popular fury swept over Phnom Penh yesterday as security forces shot Buddhist monks and beat demonstrators in increasingly chaotic and futile efforts to stifle anti-government protests breaking out around the Cambodian capital.
The explosion of mass protest involving mainly students and young people showed the seething popular frustration with a victory by the Prime Minister, Mr Hun Sen, in an election blessed by the European Union as free and fair but widely seen by Cambodians as fraudulent.
Security forces were reported to have killed at least one Buddhist monk, possibly two, and wounded others when they opened fire on a crowd of demonstrators sitting in front of the United States embassy.
Human rights monitors were trying yesterday to confirm details of the casualties in running battles between police and demonstrators.
The clashes came a day after troops tore down the tent city that had grown in so-called "Democracy Square", a park in front of Cambodia's parliament.
Mr Hun Sen had said he would use force to end two weeks of protest against perceived election cheating. Instead, he has ignited the worst violence since the bloody coup he staged a year ago, and has provoked an outburst of anger unprecedented in almost a quarter of a century.
Police and troops surrounded several Buddhist temples and schools to deter protest leaflets circulated by a monks' organisation calling on people to rise up and overthrow Mr Hun Sen.
"Everyone thought the monks were safe," commented one Phnom Penh resident in a telephone interview. "People are saying they haven't seen these kind of open attacks (on monks) since the Khmer Rouge."
Mr Sam Rainsy and Prince Norodom Ranariddh, the opposition leaders who organised and supported the Democracy Square protest, kept up the pressure yesterday by applying for permission to lead a demonstration this weekend.
Mr Rainsy continues to shelter at the office of the United Nations representative after Mr Hun Sen ordered his arrest for alleged complicity in a grenade attack on the Prime Minister's city residence. But independent observers believe that any move to detain Mr Rainsy could, in the words of one analyst, "leave this city burning".
The protest has spread well beyond the organisation of opposition parties into real grassroots anger. Groups such as students appear to be acting on their own initiative.
"It's getting worse," a Western observer in Phnom Penh said yesterday as troops and police engaged in cat-and-mouse pursuit of demonstrators through the city.
Mr Hun Sen's ruling Cambodian People's Party also appears divided over his strong-arm tactics, and security forces appear ill-equipped to contain or suppress popular protest, except by the use of force, which could bring a diplomatic backlash.