A worker at an illegal sawmill was hacked to death on Monday night – purportedly by fellow workers – in the same forest in which illegal loggers are thought to have killed two law enforcement officers late last week, police said yesterday.

Captain Veng Sokhorn, deputy chief of police in Preah Vihear province’s Tbeng Meanchey district, said yesterday that sawmill worker Dul Khom, 27, was murdered as he lay in his hammock in the Prey Roka forest in Tbeng Meanchey’s Brame commune a little before midnight.

“The perpetrators cut him many times with machetes on his face and head while he was sleeping inside his hammock in the forest at night,” Sokhorn said. “He died immediately in his hammock.”

The killing appeared to be motivated by a personal grudge within the sawmill operation, he added, and police are now seeking to arrest and punish the perpetrators.

“So far, police have already identified the perpetrators. There are four people; they all are sawmill workers working and staying with the victim in village,” he said, adding that the four will be “arrested soon”.