Tensions: deadly clashes between Thailand and Cambodia

Border clashes of rare intensity opposed Thailand and Cambodia on Thursday: Thai combat aircraft struck Cambodian military targets and artillery fire attributed to the opposite camp killed a civilian according to Bangkok.

The two kingdoms of Southeast Asia have long been tearing themselves off on the layout of their common border, defined during French Indochina, but clashes at this level of violence have not shaken the region for almost fifteen years.

Bangkok and Phnom Penh have been engaged in a Bras-de-Fer since the death of a Khmer soldier at the end of May, during an exchange of night fire in a disputed area nicknamed the “emerald triangle”.

The tensions accumulated during weeks of provocations and reprisals, which affected the economy and the fate of many inhabitants of the regions concerned, culminated Thursday morning, after a new exchange of shots near old temples disputed, at the level of the Thai province of Surin (northeast) and the Cambodian of Oddar Meanchey (northwest).

The two armies mutually accused themselves of firing first.

The Thai army said that its opponents had pulled first around 8:20 am (01:20 GMT) about 200 meters from the Thai base, after a drone had flown in the disputed area and that six armed Cambodian soldiers had approached a barbed closure.

For his part, the spokesperson for the Cambodian Ministry of Defense, Maly Socheata, accused the Thai army of having “violated the territorial integrity of Cambodia by launching an armed attack on the Cambodian forces”.

“The Cambodian armed forces have exercised their right of self-defense, in full compliance with international law, to repel the Thai incursion,” she said.

A civilian person was then killed in a “Cambodian artillery strike” against a house in the district of Kap Chong, in the province of Surin, said the office of the Thai Prime Minister.

Three other civilians were injured, including a five -year -old child. The Thai army also accused Cambodia of having launched rockets in the province.

Thailand has also deployed six F-16 combat aircraft to strike “two Cambodian military targets on the ground,” said assistant spokesman for the armed forces Ritcha Suksuwanon.

The Thai Embassy in Cambodia called its fellow citizens to leave the country “as soon as possible”.

The acting Thai Prime Minister Phumtham Wechayachai said on Thursday that “the situation required prudent management” and “to act in accordance with international law”. We will do our best to protect our sovereignty, “he said.

The Cambodian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, for its part, condemned the “military attack” Thai.

Prime Minister Hun Manet shared on Facebook a letter he sent to the President of the UN Security Council in which he denounces the “unprofequer, premeditated and deliberate” attacks of Thailand, demanding a “emergency” meeting of the Security Council.

Cambodia said Thursday that it has downgraded diplomatic relations with its neighbor to the “lowest level”.

The day before, Bangkok recalled his ambassador in place in Phnom Penh and expelled from his territory the Cambodian ambassador, after a Thai soldier lost a leg while walking on a mine on the border.

An investigation by the Thai army made it possible to determine that Cambodia had posed new terrestrial mines on the border, the Thai authorities said.

Cambodia rejected these accusations, and indicated that border areas remain infested with active mines dating from “wars of the past”.

Tensions have led Cambodia to suspend the imports of certain Thai products, and Thailand to restrict trips to the crossing points to the border.

They also indirectly provoked the suspension of Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra, following a scandal caused by the leak, on the Cambodian side, of a telephone call made in Hun Sen, who governed Cambodia for almost forty years.

Accused of breaches of ethics, Paetongtarn awaits the decision of the Constitutional Court which can dismiss it.

The most violent modern episode linked to the border dates back to clashes around the Preah Vihear temple between 2008 and 2011, which had left at least 28 dead and tens of thousands of displaced.