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Cambodians Mourn Late King in Funeral Procession


Procession participants shield themselves from the sun with portraits of the late former Cambodian King Norodom Sihanouk in a funeral procession in Phnom Penh, February 1, 2013.
Procession participants shield themselves from the sun with portraits of the late former Cambodian King Norodom Sihanouk in a funeral procession in Phnom Penh, February 1, 2013.
Hundreds of thousands of Cambodians flooded the streets of Phnom Penh Friday for funeral proceedings for the former king Norodom Sihanouk, who died in October.

Many of the mourners wept as the funeral procession carrying his casket wove through the streets of the capital city to a cremation ground next to the palace, where he was crowned as a teenagers in 1941.

His body has been lying in state at the Royal Palace after being flown from Beijing, where he died October 15 of a heart attack at the age of 89. The cremation - the climax of seven days of mourning - will take place Monday.

Sihanouk aligned himself with the murderous Khmer Rouge after he was ousted in 1970, only to later be imprisoned by the regime. He eventually fled to China.

After the Khmer Rouge fell in 1979, Sihanouk led an insurgency against the Vietnamese-installed government in his home country. He then returned to the throne in Cambodia where he abdicated in 2004, making way for his son to become king.

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