Thai and Cambodia temple dispute spills over into deadly fighting

Five Thai soldiers were killed and two khmer soldiers also killed. Thai soldiers fired first at Veal Antreay deep in Cambodia territory.

Thai and Cambodian soldiers exchanged rockets and gunfire across their border today in a deadly battle over a small and remote plot of jungle adjoining an ancient Hindu temple.

At least two Cambodian soldiers were reported to have been killed and five Thais and two Cambodians were injured in the afternoon battle at the mountain-top Preah Vihear temple, a 1,100-year old World Heritage Site and tourist attraction.

Thailand’s foreign minister urged his countrymen to flee Cambodia for fear of reprisals after an incident which will further enrage nationalists in both countries and makes a diplomatic solution to the border dispute more difficult than ever.

Each side accused the other of opening fire first, and gave a different account of the duration of the battle, which began in the middle of the afternoon. Journalists on the Cambodian side of the border reported seeing rocket-propelled grenades fired by the Thais. At least ten Thai soldiers stationed in a pagoda surrendered to the Cambodians.

“We are not the ones who ignited the violence,” the Thai prime minister Somchai Wongsawat said in the Thai capital, Bangkok. “The situation has returned to normal now . . . It is not serious and I am convinced there will be resolution.”

But there was no immediate sign of dialogue between the two sides. In Phnom Penh, the Cambodian prime minister, Hun Sen, held an emergency meeting with ministers and generals, the day after threatening a “life-and-death battle” if Thailand did not pull its forces back.

Earlier in the day, Thailand had put jet fighters on alert, and prepared for a potential evacuation of civilians from border areas by placing Hercules transporter planes on standby at an air force base in Bangkok.

The foreign minister, Sompong Amornvivat, urged Thais in Cambodia to return home immediately. “Thai businessmen who have no need to be in Cambodia now, please rush back to Thailand,” he said. We have our evacuation plan ready.”

The territorial dispute which led to today’s battle dates back fifty years, but it is only since the summer that it has developed into a political and military crisis. Perched on the top of a 1,600 foot cliff, Preah Vihear can be reached far more easily from Thailand than from Cambodia. But the territory was awarded to Cambodia in 1962 by the International Court of Justice after lengthy legal arguments about maps of produced during Cambodia’s French colonial period.

However, one adjacent packet of jungly land - 1.8 square miles in area - was never clearly allocated, and it is over this that the two countries fought.

The temple’s inaccessible position made it a natural fortress for successive armies which battled over Cambodia – it was the last hold-out of the forces of the Lon Nol regime, driven out by the genocidal Khmer Rouge in 1975. Even after their own defeat, Khmer Rouge forces occupied the temple until 1998, sowing the land around it with landmines.

Thai locals and tourists were allowed to visit the temple freely from Thailand without a visa, and the dispute was largely forgotten until July this month when the United Nations cultural organisation, Unesco, granted an application for Preah Vihear to be designate a World Heritage site.

When it turned out that the Thai government had supported the application, nationalists in Bangkok accused ministers of yielding sovereign territory in return for business concessions. Thailand’s constitutional court ruled that endorsing the Unesco application was illegal, and the former foreign minister resigned.

Since then, the Thai government has been under relentless pressure from nationalist demonstrators who want to force it from power. They have occupied the prime minister’s office and fought violent battles with the police.

To take a step back in the confrontation with its smaller neighbour, Cambodia, would invite further denunciation of the government, making it very difficult for Mr Somchai to be seen to compromise. But, apart from saving face, both countries could lose much in any extended military confrontation.

Cambodia is outgunned by Thailand, which has 300,000 troops equipped by the United States. The Royal Cambodian Armed Forces are barely a third as big and poorly equipped, but many of its men are experienced former fighters of the Khmer Rouge who could quickly bog the Thais down in a guerrilla war.