Hundreds of Chinese enter Cambodia, fleeing Vietnam violence - police

PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - Hundreds of Chinese nationals have fled to Cambodia to escape anti-China riots in Vietnam in which at least 20 people are reported to have been killed, Cambodian police said on Thursday. "Yesterday more than 600 Chinese people from Vietnam crossed at Bavet international checkpoint into Cambodia," National Police spokesman Kirt Chantharith told Reuters. "They are at guest houses and hotels in Phnom Penh, with around 100 people staying in Bavet town," he added. "After the situation calms down, they may go back to Vietnam or to other places." Bavet is on a highway stretching from Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam's commercial centre, to Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh. Thousands of Vietnamese set fire to foreign factories and rampaged through industrial zones in the south of the country in an angry reaction to Chinese oil drilling in a part of the South China Sea claimed by Vietnam. (Reporting by Phnom Penh bureau; Writing by Alan Raybould; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)