Cambodia Thai Border Tensions Rise as Hundreds Evacuated
As tensions reappear, hundreds are evacuated from the disputed Thai border by Cambodia. A frontier community is evacuated after one inhabitant is purportedly killed in a shooting.
As tensions between the neighbours escalate and jeopardise a ceasefire reached in July, hundreds of Cambodians have been evacuated from a village on the disputed border with Thailand.
According to provincial vice governor Ly Sovannarith, over 250 families from Prey Chan in the northwest province of Banteay Meanchey, Cambodia, were transported on Thursday to a Buddhist temple 29 kilometres (18 miles) from the border.
The evacuation happened the day after it was reported that a guy named Dy Nai had been murdered in a gunfight between Thai and Cambodian forces near the same frontier settlement.
Hun Manet, the prime minister of Cambodia, stated that three more people were hurt in the event. Both sides claimed they weren’t the first to fire, blaming the other for what transpired on Wednesday.
While Cambodia’s Ministry of National Defence stated that Thai forces started the gunfight at approximately 3:50 p.m. (08:50 GMT), Thai Major General Winthai Suvaree claimed that Cambodian soldiers started the shooting.
The Thai army claims that the gunfire lasted for roughly ten minutes.The fatal event is only the most recent to cast doubt on the Thai-Cambodian truce, which came into force in July following five days of combat that left thousands temporarily displaced and dozens dead.
Thailand accused Cambodia earlier this week of planting new landmines after claiming that one of its soldiers had lost a foot when a mine detonated on Monday close to their border in the province of Sisaket.
The accusation has been refuted by the Cambodian Defence Ministry, which maintains that the mine must have been positioned there during earlier conflicts. Bangkok responded by calling Phnom Penh’s answer inadequate.
Thailand declared on Monday that it was suspending an enhanced ceasefire that the two sides had signed in late October with the backing of US President Donald Trump, following its announcement that its soldier was injured.
Bangkok announced that it was stopping the Wednesday release of eighteen Cambodian soldiers as part of this suspension.
Less than three weeks had passed since Trump and the prime ministers of Malaysia, Cambodia, and Thailand cosigned the agreement in Kuala Lumpur during an Association of Southeast Asian Nations conference.
The US president boasted, “We did something that a lot of people said couldn’t be done.” Due to a poorly defined French border treaty in 1907, the two countries’ 800-kilometer (500-mile) border has been the subject of a territorial dispute for decades. Cambodia was a French colony at the time.
