A green crystal Buddha statue thought to have been hidden from the Khmer Rouge was uncovered yesterday morning by a villager in Battambang town’s O’mal commune as she dug up a stand of bamboo stalks near her house, said commune chief Yun Yi.

“As I estimate, it is about 50 years old” and made during the period of Norodom Sihanouk’s rule in the late 1950s and 1960s, he said, noting that the 10-centimetre statue could have been hidden during the time of the anti-Buddhist Khmer Rouge regime.

Yi said yesterday that the villager was digging when she struck something hard and saw a greenish glint.

According to a local newspaper, the woman initially believed she had uncovered a piece of unexploded ordnance.

To contact the reporter on this story: Mom Kunthear at [email protected]