A Thai F-16 jet has bombed targets in Cambodia, as a simmering border dispute and diplomatic meltdown rapidly ignited into fierce clashes, bombing and shelling that have killed at least 13 civilians and a soldier in Thailand.
Thailand and Cambodia blamed each other for the new outbreak of fighting that erupted early on Thursday in an area near the disputed Ta Moan Thom Temple, located in a border area in northwestern Cambodia’s Oddar Meanchey province.
Fighting then spread to at least six areas along the border, Thai military official Rear Admiral Surasant Kongsiri said, leading Thailand’s military to close the border between the countries.
Amid regional calls for mediation, Thailand’s caretaker Prime Minister Phumtham Wechayachai told a news conference that fighting had to stop before there could be any negotiations. He said there had been no declaration of war and that the fighting was not spreading to other provinces.
Thailand’s health ministry said that 13 civilians and one soldier had been killed, as Cambodian forces fired heavy weapons into Thai territory. At least 32 civilians and 14 soldiers had been wounded.
Health Minister Thepsuthin Somsak told reporters that Cambodia’s actions, including an attack near a hospital that had been evacuated ahead of the strikes, should be considered war crimes.
Six of the civilian victims were killed, and two others wounded, in shelling near a petrol station in Ban Phue, Kantharalak district, Sisaket province, about 20km (12 miles) from the border, the Thai military said in a statement.
Cambodia has made no statement about any casualties on its side.
The fighting has led to the evacuation of at least 40,000 civilians from more than 80 villages near the border to safer locations, a district official in Surin province told the Reuters news agency, as residents fled to bomb shelters built of concrete and fortified with sandbags and car tyres.
Videos posted on social media and verified by Al Jazeera showed hundreds of people walking along streets carrying bags packed with their belongings.
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet has requested an urgent meeting of the United Nations Security Council in response to the violence, saying it “gravely threatened peace in the region”.
Both sides trade blame
Both countries issued statements accusing the other of instigating the fighting that erupted early on Thursday near a disputed temple, following weeks of heightened tension between the neighbours.
The Thai military said the incident began at about 7:35am (00:35 GMT) when a unit guarding the ancient Ta Moan Thom Temple heard a Cambodian drone overhead, before seeing six armed Cambodian soldiers moving closer to Thai military positions at the border.
At about 8:20am, the Cambodian forces opened fire towards the eastern side of the temple, 200 metres (660 feet) from the Thai military base, and also hit a community in Surin’s Kap Choeng district with two BM-21 rockets, the Thai military said.
Ritcha Suksuwanon, Thai military deputy spokesperson, said six Thai F-16 fighter jets were deployed from Ubon Ratchathani province in response, hitting two “Cambodian military targets on the ground”.
But Cambodia’s Defence Ministry claimed Thailand deployed a drone first before opening fire, and that Cambodia “acted strictly within the bounds of self-defence, responding to an unprovoked incursion by Thai troops that violated our territorial integrity”.
Cambodia’s Ministry of National Defence said the Thai jets dropped two bombs on a road, and that it “strongly condemns the reckless and brutal military aggression of the Kingdom of Thailand against the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Cambodia”.
Cambodia’s influential former prime minister, Hun Sen, said in a post on social media that Thailand’s military had shelled two Cambodian provinces bordering Thailand, Oddar Meanchey and Preah Vihear, adding that “the Cambodian army has no choice but to fight back and counterattack”.
Thailand has announced school closures in some regions, while Cambodia also said it had evacuated students and teachers from affected areas.
‘Stand down’: Malaysian PM
The fighting has drawn expressions of concern from other Asian countries, which have called for a halt to the violence.
Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, the current chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to which Thailand and Cambodia belong, said the two sides showed “willingness” to prevent further hostilities after he spoke to the leaders of both countries on Thursday evening.
“I welcome the positive signals and willingness shown by both Bangkok and Phnom Penh to consider this path forward,” he said, while also expressing Kuala Lumpur’s willingness to “assist and facilitate this process in the spirit of ASEAN unity and shared responsibility.”
At a briefing, a spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Guo Jiakun, also expressed Beijing’s deep concern, saying it hoped both sides would address their issues through dialogue. He said China would play a constructive role in promoting de-escalation.
Long-simmering dispute ‘exploded’
Reporting from Koh Lanta, southern Thailand, Al Jazeera’s Tony Cheng said the long-simmering dispute had suddenly “exploded”.
“We hadn’t seen a lot of actual exchanges of fire over the border – but today, that all changed,” he said.
He said the fighting had its origins in a longstanding dispute over the border drawn between the countries by the French during Cambodia’s colonial era, in regions where there had been relatively free movement of people back and forth for generations.
The dispute has dragged on for decades, flaring into deadly military clashes more than 15 years ago, and then again in May, when a Cambodian soldier was killed in a firefight further to the north of the conflict areas.
In recent weeks, tensions surged again after Thai soldiers were severely injured by landmines that the Thai military says were newly laid by Cambodian forces on the Thai side of the border.
Cheng said nationalist sentiment was surging on both sides, with Cambodia recently announcing that it would begin military conscription from next year. Hun Sen – the former Cambodian prime minister and father of the current prime minister – was “right at the heart of” whipping up tensions in his country over the dispute.
Phil Robertson, the Bangkok-based director of the Asia Human Rights and Labour Advocates (AHRLA), said he expected the situation to “get worse before it gets better”.
“Right now,” he said, “neither side wants to be seen as conceding any ground to the other, so the fighting is likely to continue for some time, primarily in the form of firing across the border with artillery and firefights across the border in disputed areas.”
Thailand, Cambodia downgrade diplomatic relations
For more than a century, Thailand and Cambodia have contested sovereignty at various undemarcated points along their 817km (508-mile) land border.
The latest skirmishes broke out after Thailand recalled its ambassador to Cambodia late on Wednesday, and said it would expel Cambodia’s envoy, after a second Thai soldier lost a limb to a landmine, which Bangkok claimed had been recently laid by Cambodia in the disputed area, in a week. In response, Cambodia said it would withdraw all of its diplomats from Thailand and ordered all Thai diplomats to leave.
Cambodia has denied planting mines and claims that Thai soldiers have veered off agreed paths and triggered mines left behind from Cambodia’s civil war.
