Cambodian police are investigating a raid on a US-funded women?s shelter in which gunmen abducted 93 women and young girls a day after police had rescued them from a brothel, officials said.Washington has demanded a full probe into the incident which began on Tuesday when the victims were rescued from the Chhay Hour 2 hotel, a reputed brothel in the capital Phnom Penh, and taken to the shelter.

A day later 30 armed gunmen abducted the group in a raid on the shelter, which has closed temporarily after its employees were threatened by the intruders.

Police said they did not know who had stormed the shelter and no arrests had been made. ?We cannot ignore this and we need further investigation,? General Heng Peov, Phnom Penh?s police chief, told Reuters.

About 50 of the women had shown up at the US embassy in Phnom Penh early on Saturday to say they were not prostitutes but worked at the hotel as bar or massage girls, Heng Peov said.

He said the group, aged 18 to 28, had either returned to work at the hotel or had gone home.

?They were not sex workers. They just worked as massage or karaoke girls,? said Heng Peov.

Embassy officials were unavailable for comment, but in Washington a top US diplomat in charge of combating human trafficking demanded a full investigation.

?What the government of Cambodia has to do is arrest the traffickers, free the victims and stand behind the police chief who made the raid,? said John Miller, director of the State Department?s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons.

Cambodia?s Anti-Human Trafficking and Juvenile Protection Department, headed by General Un Sokunthea, had rescued the women and children and arrested operators of the brothel hotel on December 7, the State Department said in a statement.

The statement said eight brothel operators were reportedly released a day later and went back armed to seize the victims from a shelter run by the NGO Agir pour les Femmes En Situation Precaire ? Acting for Women in Distressing Situations (AFESIP).

The group receives US funding, but it has closed its doors after its workers received death threats.

?If they could storm into our office, they could also kill us,? said AFESIP president Mam Somaly. ?We have closed our office until the government brings the perpetrators to justice. If they fail to do so we will shut our office forever,? she added.

She said many of the girls were under 18, the age of consent in Cambodia, and might have been pressured to say they were not involved in prostitution. ?We did our job and leave it to the government to handle it?.

Cambodia emerged in the early 1990s from decades of war and the death of an estimated 1.7 million people under Pol Pot?s 1975-79 ?Killing Fields? regime.

But the country remains one of the world?s poorest. Cambodia and neighbouring Southeast Asian states such as Myanmar and Thailand are considered sources and transit routes for women and children trafficked for sex.

Miller said the incident was a disappointing setback because Cambodia had made some headway in fighting trafficking in people in recent years.

Ek MADRA

Human rights abuses are growing in Asia as most countries in the region face a breakdown of the rule of law, a Hong Kong-based rights group said on Friday. The Asian Human Rights Commission said it had documented rights violations in Bangladesh, Bhutan, Burma, Indonesia, India, Malaysia, Nepal, Pakistan, Singapore, Sri Lanka and Thailand, with most victims coming from poorer communities. ?The incidence of rights abuse in Asia is growing exponentially,? it said in a statement to mark International Human Rights Day on Friday. ?Asia?s human rights situation remains very bleak with most countries facing the breakdown of the rule of law that makes their people live in instability and constant fear,? it said. ?The absence of the rule of law permits the exercise of absolute power.?

More Asians were ready to defend and assert their rights, but many who dared to make complaints and seek justice often met harsher and more violent state reactions, it said. ?This popular upsurge in almost all countries is greater than at any time in the past,? the group said. But of those who protested, ?some were harassed and intimidated; some were killed,? the group said. Forced disappearances and custodial torture are major threats to human rights in many places in the region, it said. It highlighted Nepal and southern Thailand as places where the rising number of disappearances was causing deep concern.

Many countries used torture to maintain law and order, it said. ?Police stations and military barracks in most places double as torture chambers.? The group said police were ?the greatest obstacle? to the protection and promotion of human rights throughout the region, and were often the law breakers violating human rights. ?The majority of people suffer, a handful obtain extraordinary benefits. State security forces enjoy virtual impunity, and engage in extreme forms of cruelty,? the group said.