Officials from both Southeast Asian countries on Wednesday blamed each other for reigniting the conflict, which has killed at least 13 soldiers and civilians since the start of the week and pushed over 500,000 people on both sides of the border to evacuate for safety.
By Asaye Bankole
Fighting between Thailand and Cambodia has entered its third day, with cross-border shelling and airstrikes forcing more than half a million civilians to flee their homes, authorities said.
Officials from both Southeast Asian countries on Wednesday blamed each other for reigniting the conflict, which has killed at least 13 soldiers and civilians since the start of the week and pushed over 500,000 people on both sides of the border to evacuate for safety.
“More than 400,000 people have been moved to safe shelters across seven provinces,” Thailand’s Ministry of Defence spokesperson Surasant Kongsiri told reporters at a news conference.
“Civilians have been forced to evacuate in large numbers because we assessed an imminent threat to their safety,” he added.
The Thai military also reported that rockets fired from Cambodia landed near Phanom Dong Rak Hospital in Surin on Wednesday morning, causing patients and hospital staff to take shelter in a bunker.
In neighbouring Cambodia, “101,229 people have been evacuated to safe shelters or to relatives’ homes in five provinces,” said Maly Socheata, spokeswoman for Cambodia’s Ministry of National Defence.
Cambodianess, a news website run by the Cambodian Media Broadcasting Corporation, reported that Thai F-16 jets struck two locations inside Cambodia, while Thai shelling continued in three other areas.
Meanwhile, Thailand’s Matichon Online news outlet reported that the Thai military had deployed F-16s to strike “a Cambodian military target” along the border on Wednesday morning.
This week’s clashes are the deadliest since five days of fighting in July, which killed dozens of people and displaced about 300,000 on both sides of the border before a fragile truce was reached with the intervention of United States President Donald Trump.
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