World Relief (WR) staff members Khoun Sokan and Toun Chanthom were robbed and fatally shot October 16 in Kompong Cham, Cambodia.
Sokan and Chanthom were shot at close range by automatic weapons while riding a motorbike. The women had just met with a group of neighborhood women who had repaid WR small business loans. Joel Copple, WR’s Cambodia director, says the incident was most likely a brutal robbery rather than a case of religious intimidation or persecution.
Sokan and Chanthom were both widows who had worked for WR since the organization’s Gateway Program to help women feed and clothe their children through small loans began in the area in 1994.
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