Police yesterday were yet to identify a young boy found dead in a Chroy Changvar pond with strangulation wounds on Friday morning.

Bun Kimly, a penal police officer from Bakheng commune where the boy was found, said staff at Phnom Penh Referral Hospital found bruises on the neck of the boy, whose parents have not come forward.

A joint task force has been set up by the National Police and the Child Protection Unit (CPU) to investigate the death.

CPU director James McCabe said this is the first time since the NGO began operating that no parent or caregiver had come forward to claim a murdered child as their own.

McCabe said the boy, who is believed to have been aged between 3 and 4, was found wearing red, green, yellow and blue pyjamas with cartoon bears on them.

He added that it is believed the murder took place on June 1, two days prior to the boy’s discovery by two neighbourhood children.

Penal police officer Kimly said witnesses reported seeing a woman who said she was from Kampot carrying the boy to the pond.

The same woman is also said to have been seen on her phone angrily threatening to kill her son.