A tourist from New Zealand who has admitted to breaking a Buddha statue at Cambodia’s ancient Angkor Wat temple complex says it was fake and ‘didn’t belong’ there.

Willemijn Vermaat, 40, told media in New Zealand that she did not intend to destroy the statue but ‘something strange happened to her’ and she heard voices when she visited the Bayon temple dedicated to Buddha.

The Dutch woman, who has been living in Wellington for nearly a decade, claimed the 12th century temple belongs to a goddess named Inanna – not Buddha – and she was cleaning up rubbish to appease her.

A Buddha statue sits at one of the entrances of Bayon temple at Angkor Wat, a Unesco World Heritage Site

The incident occurred after the complex, a Unesco World Heritage Site, had closed to visitors on the final night of her four-week holiday to Laos and Cambodia.

She told Stuff.co.nz: ‘When I got in there I got a very strange feeling that something was talking to me, but it was like it was my own thoughts.

‘It was telling me I had to clean up the temple because there was too much rubbish, from the monks and other people.’

She was discovered by three monks but retreated into the jungle while authorities scoured the grounds for her. She eventually returned to the temple to meditate once the search ended.

Angkor Wat contains Bayon temple (pictured) and remains of different capitals of the Khmer Empire

Ms Vermaat said: ‘I was told I had to move the Buddha but I said I didn't want to as it's such a great religion and nothing to make fun of.

‘So I tried to sit on his lap but that didn't work so I pushed him out, and I was apologising to him, but that must have been when I broke it.’

She said the voices went away after she stopped meditating.

Ms Vermaat told APNZ: ‘That night some strange things happened and I don't know, maybe I can just bring it down to being possessed by something and although I still remember everything as well. I was aware but I wasn't completely the person in charge so to say.’

Willemijn Vermaat said she damaged the statue while she was cleaning up 'rubbish' in the temple

After she left the temple she was questioned by police and released even though she told them she had damaged the statue. By then she had already missed her evening flight to Bangkok.

Police attempted to arrest her the following day for damaging the statue but she had already left the country.

Officials temporarily closed the temple to tourists and transported the statue’s pieces to a museum to find out if it can be reassembled.

Bayon temple is a shrine to the Buddha, decorated with dozens of stone faces and statues

Officials have taken the statue’s pieces to a museum to find out if it can be repaired

Authorities said the statue, dating from the reign of Jayavarman VII in the late 12th century, was restored in the 1980s after it was discovered in pieces. But other media suggested it was a replica.

Ms Vermaat told Stuff.co.nz that she felt bad about breaking the statue but it should not have been on display in the first place.