Thai-Cambodian clash at temple flares anew
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia - Thai and Cambodian soldiers revived a long-simmering dispute over an 11th-century temple near their border, trading fire yesterday with machine guns and rocket launchers in clashes that left as many as four people dead.
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia - Thai and Cambodian soldiers revived a long-simmering dispute over an 11th-century temple near their border, trading fire yesterday with machine guns and rocket launchers in clashes that left as many as four people dead.
The latest flare-up - if not quickly resolved - could overshadow a summit of Asian leaders opening next week in the Thai coastal town of Pattaya. The summit was delayed in December after antigovernment demonstrators took over Thailand's two main airports in Bangkok.
The fighting broke out near the cliff-top Preah Vihear temple on the Cambodian side of an ill-defined border. Soldiers clashed again hours later, but the area was quiet by evening and the two sides were in talks to defuse the crisis.
Accounts varied. Both sides said Cambodia fired first, but officials there said it was because Thais strayed into their territory, while Thailand's foreign ministry denied that its soldiers crossed over. The ministry said the Thai soldiers were investigating a land-mine blast that blew off a soldier's leg the day before.
Both sides said the other fired machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades.
Anywhere from one to four Thai soldiers were killed and zero to 10 were captured, depending on who was saying it.
"The fighting has stopped," Maj. Nou Sarath, a Cambodian soldier at the border, said. "Commanders from both sides are talking."
Leaders in both countries have a history of playing to nationalist sentiment in sovereignty disputes, and the temple has been a flash point.
The World Court awarded the temple to Cambodia in 1962, but sovereignty over the surrounding land has never been clearly resolved.
Tensions flared in July when UNESCO, the U.N. cultural agency, approved Cambodia's bid to have the Preah Vihear temple named a World Heritage Site, leading some Thais to believe their claims to the surrounding land were being undermined.
The tensions erupted in brief border clashes last year, killing two Cambodian soldiers and one Thai. Both sides have stepped up deployment of soldiers at the border since then.
