THE CAMBODIAN capital became a robbers' paradise yesterday, with triumphant soldiers of the Second Prime Minister leading the charge, even as television replayed a statement by Mr Hun Sen justifying his weekend coup.
Charred bodies of at least 10 soldiers still lay in bullet-riddled vehicles outside the city home of a royalist general as macabre evidence of the bitter fighting unleashed by his putsch against the First Prime Minister, Prince Norodom Ranariddh.
But the fighting was not all one-sided. Dumped outside one temple lay the corpses of four of Mr Hun Sen's soldiers, one bound and gagged, and two other soldiers' bodies lay by the side of the main road to the airport, abandoned like the burnt-out skeletons of three tanks scattered at nearby intersections.
Their comrades-in-arms evidently had a more rewarding mission on their minds. The death toll has risen to 32, military and civilian, and seems certain to rise higher. But free enterprise was the name of the game yesterday, not brooding on the price of Mr Hun Sen's coup. Military lorries were hurtling away by early morning laden with everything from furniture to motorcycles.
It was not the kind of genesis to boost the image of the new-look government Second Prime Minister Hun Sen was seeking to sell to local and international opinion. Hour after hour, television displayed the 49-year- old political strongman in the uniform of a four-star general, denigrating his erstwhile co-prime minister as "the traitor Ranariddh".
An offer of mediation by King Norodom Sihanouk had come too late, Mr Hun Sen said crisply, "because Ranariddh is illegal and a criminal and the Phnom Penh court is preparing to charge him".
This was not a coup, Mr Hun Sen insisted, he was not seeking to take over the post of First Prime Minister, a job assigned to Prince Ranariddh's Funcinpec grouping after it won a majority in the 1993 elections. He was willing to work with anyone Funcinpec selected for the job - except Prince Ranariddh.
No one in Phnom Penh is fooled. "This is a coup d'etat and as coup organisers do he is scrambling around for some Iegitimacy," a western analyst remarked. "The only question left is whether the international community will fall for it."
Prince Ranariddh, in France, is embarking on an international odyssey to try to ensure it does not. His bid for support, however, looked on shaky ground.
The Association of South East Asian Nations announced yesterday it would hold an emergency meeting on Saturday to discuss the Cambodian situation.
PA adds: Hundreds of foreign tourists emerged from their Phnom Penh hotels after being besieged by the rival armies.
Ms Joyce McCallum (39), from Glasgow, had been trapped in the Juliana Hotel with her husband and two children. But she said she had no intention of leaving Cambodia and planned to stay with friends in a nearby provincial town. "I'm not afraid. I'm a barmaid and it sometimes gets pretty rough at night in Glasgow," she said.