Thai soldiers injured in landmine blast near the Cambodia border, confirms govt
One soldier suffered a severe leg injury when he stepped on a landmine while patrolling the border in Si Sa Ket province on Saturday morning, the Royal Thai Army said in a statement.
Two other soldiers sustained minor injuries, it said.
The landmine blast pointed to covert use of weapons by the Cambodian troops, Thai army spokesman Winthai Suvaree said in a statement, adding the incident poses a serious obstacle to the ceasefire and peaceful resolution of the border conflict.
The Thai government said it will be lodging a protest against Cambodia for breach of the Ottawa Convention banning use of anti-personnel mines.
Thai and Cambodian forces fought for five days in late July, using fighter jets, missiles, and heavy artillery, before Malaysia brokered a ceasefire backed by the US and China. The clashes killed over 40 people, injured many others, and displaced hundreds of thousands from border areas in both countries.
This was preceded by months of simmering border tensions, during which at least two Thai soldiers were maimed by landmines.
Last week, senior security officials from Cambodia and Thailand agreed on measures to enforce the truce and ease tensions. They also accepted neutral monitoring of the ceasefire by defense attaché teams from Association of Southeast Asian Nations member states.
Thai-Cambodia tensions trace back to the colonial-era treaties that defined their boundaries and the resulting maps that laid them out differently.
The sovereignty of several areas along their roughly 800-kilometer (500-mile) disputed border remains points of contention, and various efforts to demarcate the boundary have yet to yield results.
Relations had been stable since the 2011 clashes that left dozens dead, before last month's fresh round of fighting.
-- ©2025 Bloomberg L.P.
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