Mortal clashes, which resumed this Friday, July 25 in several places along the border between Thailand and Cambodia led to the evacuation of more than 138,000 civilians on the Thai side, according to Bangkok, which warns that these incidents “could become a war.”
The border dispute between these two countries in Southeast Asia has been giving rise to a level of violence since 2011 since 2011, which involves combat, tanks, terrestrial troops and artillery fire in several places in dispute.
The Thai Ministry of Health informed 15 people, including a soldier, and more than forty people injured on the Thai side.
Cambodia, meanwhile, deplores a dead man, a 70 -year -old man and five injured, spokesman for the border province of Cambodia de Oddar Meanchey (North West) told AFP, in what is the first official Cambodian evaluation.
“I don’t know when we can go home”
At the request of the Cambodian Prime Minister, Hun Manet, the United Nations Security Council will hold an emergency meeting this Friday in New York.
“If the situation is getting worse, it could become a war,” Thai’s Prime Minister Phumtham Wechayachai said on Friday, journalists on Friday.
The Thai Ministry of Health said Friday that more than 138,000 civilians had been evacuated from the areas involved, located in the northeast of the country.
In the Cambodian city of Samraong, 20 km from the border, AFP journalists heard distant artillery fire on Friday morning. Several families with children and their businesses on the back of their vehicles fled at full speed.
“I live very close to the border. We are afraid because they began to shoot around 6 am” (Thursday 23:00 GMT), 41 years old told AFP Pro Bak, taking his wife and children to a Buddhist temple to take refuge in him. “I don’t know when we can go home,” he says.
“Positive signals”
AFP journalists have also seen soldiers running towards rocket launchers and hurrying towards the border.
The Prime Minister of Malaysia, Anwar Ibrahim, who provides the rotating presidency of the Southeast Asian Nations Association (ASEAN) of which Thailand and Cambodia are members, this Thursday night exchanged with their Thai and Jemer counterparts.
The manager, who claims a “high immediate fire” and the peaceful resolution of tensions, had welcomed “positive signals and the will that Bangkok and Phnom Penh considered this result”, in a message on Facebook.
A few hours after this position, the fight resumed in three areas around 4:00 am (Thursday 9:00 pm GMT), said the Thai army.
The Cambodian forces have bombarded with heavy weapons, campaign artillery and BM-21 rocket systems, said the army, and Thai troops retaliate “with appropriate support fire.”
The two countries accuse each other to open fire and defend their right to self -defense. Bangkok also accused his opponents of attacking civil infrastructure as a hospital and a service station, which Phnom Penh defended himself.
Thailand has also deployed several F-16 combat planes to attack what Cambodian military objectives has presented.
Call the dialogue
Bangkok and Phnom Penh have been involved in a Fer Brazters since the death of a soldier Jemer at the end of May, during a night exchange of fire in a disputed area of his common border nicknamed the “Emerald Triangle”.
The two countries dispute the design of their common border, defined during French Indochina.
The most violent modern episode linked to this dispute 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.
The United Nations Court agreed in Cambodia twice, in 1962 and in 2013, on the property of the Preah Vihear temple, which appears as a world heritage for UNESCO, and a surrounding area.
On Wednesday, Bangkok reminded his ambassador to Phnom Penh and expelled his territory, the Cambodian ambassador, after a Thai soldier lost a leg while walking through a mine on the border.
An investigation carried out by the Thai army made it possible to determine that Cambodia had raised new mines on the border, according to the Thai authorities. Cambodia rejected these accusations and indicated that the border areas remain infested with active mines dating from “past wars.”
The United States, France, the European Union and China have requested dialogue and at the end of the conflict.
Source: BFM TV
