Thailand: Popular holiday destination launches F-16 fighter jets as clashes erupt with Cambodia over their disputed border
Tensions between Thailand and Cambodia over their disputed border are escalating.
Thailand deployed fighter jets against Cambodian military targets along their disputed border on Thursday. The tensions threaten to erupt into a broader conflict.
It comes a day after a Thai soldier lost his leg in a landmine explosion, an incident that saw relations between the two Southeast Asian neighbors collapse to their lowest level in years. Thailand’s 2nd regional military command in the northeast said in a post on Facebook that F-16 fighter jets had been deployed. It also claimed to have “destroyed” two Cambodian regional military support units.
Thailand’s Deputy Army spokesperson Col. Richa Suksuwanont said the airstrikes were aimed only at military targets. There was no immediate confirmation from the Cambodian side.
Armed clashes between Thai and Cambodian forces had broken out along the disputed border earlier on Thursday, according to military officials, injuring civilians and prompting the evacuation of residents in Thailand. Two hospitals in Thailand’s Surin province near the site of the clash have also begun evacuating patients, according to Thailand’s ministry of public health.
The armed clashes began early morning when Thailand’s military said Cambodian troops fired at a Thai army base in an area near the ancient Ta Muen Thom Temple – which lies in disputed territory in the south of Thailand’s Surin province and in Cambodia’s northwest. It said Cambodia had deployed an unmanned drone in front of the temple before sending troops in with weapons.
It also accused Cambodian troops of firing heavy weapons into a civilian area in the nearby Kap Choeng district, in Surin province. A Cambodian Defense Ministry spokesperson said their troops had acted in self-defense after an unprovoked incursion from Thai soldiers.
Tensions between the two neighbors had already gone downhill in May, when a Cambodian soldier was killed during a clash between Thai and Cambodian troops in which both sides opened fire in a contested border area of the Emerald Triangle, where Cambodia, Thailand and Laos meet. The two countries share a 508-mile (817-kilometer) land border – largely mapped by the French while they occupied Cambodia - that has periodically seen military clashes and been the source of political tensions.