On Thursday, a Thai F-16 fighter plane bombed targets in Cambodia, the two parties said, as weeks of tension on a border dispute turned into clashes that killed at least two civilians.
Of the six F-16 fighter planes that Thailand prepared to deploy along the disputed border, one of the planes fired in Cambodia and destroyed a military target, the Thai army said. The two countries accused themselves of starting the shock early Thursday.
“We used air power against military targets as expected,” Thai army spokesman Richa Suksuwanon told journalists. Thailand has also closed its border with Cambodia.
The Cambodia Ministry of Defense said that the jets had abandoned two bombs on a road and that it “firmly condemns the reckless and brutal military aggression of the Kingdom of Thailand against the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Cambodia”.
The skirmishes came after Thailand recalled his ambassador On Wednesday, in Cambodia, said that he would expel the Cambodia envoy to Bangkok, after a second Thai soldier in the space of a week lost a member because of a mine which, according to Bangkok, had been recently tabled in the disputed area.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Thailand said that Cambodian troops had drawn “a strong artillery” on Thursday morning at a Thai military base and targeted from civil zones, including a hospital, causing civilian victims.
“The Royal Thai government is ready to intensify our self -defense measures if Cambodia persists in its armed attack and its violations of Thailand’s sovereignty,” the ministry said in a statement.
Thai residents, including children and the elderly, ran to shelters built in concrete and fortified with sandbags and car tires in the province of the Surin border.
“How many laps have been dismissed? It is countless,” said an unidentified woman at the Thai Public Broadcast Service (TPBS) when he was hiding in the refuge while shots and explosions were heard in the background.
The Cambodia Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that Thailand’s air strikes were “not caused” and called on its neighbor to withdraw its forces and “refrain from any other provocative action that could degenerate the situation”.
For more than a century, Thailand and Cambodia have challenged sovereignty at various points not started along their 817 km (508 miles), which has led to skirmishes over several years and at least a dozen deaths, especially during a week -long artillery exchange in 2011.
The tensions were revived in May following the murder of a Cambodian soldier during a brief exchange of shots, who turned into a diplomatic crisis in its own right and has now triggered armed clashes.
The clashes started early Thursday near the disputed temple of your moan along the eastern border between Cambodia and Thailand, about 360 km from the Thai capital, Bangkok.
“Artillery Shell came across people’s houses,” Sutthirot Charoenthanasak, Kabcheing district chief in Suurin province.
“Two people died,” he said, adding that the district authorities had evacuated 40,000 civilians from 86 villages near the border in safer places.
The army of Thailand said that Cambodia had deployed a surveillance drone before sending troops with heavy weapons in an area near the temple.
Cambodian troops opened fire and two Thai soldiers were injured, said a spokesman for the Thai army, adding that Cambodia had used several weapons, including rocket launchers.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Cambodia of Defense, however, said that there had been an incursion not caused by Thai troops and the Cambodian forces had responded in self-defense.
The acting Prime Minister of Thailand, Phumtham Wechayachai, said that the situation was delicate.
“We have to be careful,” he told journalists. “We will follow international law.”
An attempt by Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra to resolve recent tensions via an appeal with the former influential Prime Minister of Cambodia, Hun Sen, whose content has been disclosed, launched a political storm in Thailand, leading to his suspension by a court.
Hun Sen declared in an article on Facebook that two Cambodian provinces had been under the bombing of the Thai army.
Thailand accused Cambodia this week this week of having placed terrestrial mines in a disputed area which injured three soldiers. Phnom Penh denied the complaint and declared that the soldiers had turned the agreed routes and launched a mine left from decades of war.
Cambodia has many terrestrial mines in its civil war decades ago, in the number of millions of groups to de-mining.
But Thailand argues that land mines have been recently placed in the border area, which Cambodia has described as foundation allegations.
