Bangkok says Phnom Penh have to be first to declare a ceasefire and cooperate ‘sincerely’ on demining the border.
Printed On 16 Dec 2025
Thailand has demanded Cambodia have to be the primary to declare a halt in combating with a view to convey an finish to the latest round of clashes between the southeast Asian neighbours.
“Because the aggressor onto Thai territory, Cambodia should announce the ceasefire first,” Overseas Ministry spokesperson Maratee Nalita Andamo mentioned throughout a briefing in Bangkok on Tuesday, the AFP information company reported.
Really helpful Tales
checklist of 4 gadgetsfinish of checklist
She added that Cambodia should additionally cooperate “sincerely” in efforts to clear landmines within the border areas.
There was no instant response from Cambodia. Every nation has blamed the opposite for instigating the clashes, claiming self-defence and blaming the opposite for assaults on civilians.
Dozens killed
Fighting between the neighbours, prompted by longstanding rival claims to territory alongside their 817km (508-mile) land border, was reignited by a skirmish on December 7.
The renewed clashes at varied areas have killed not less than 32 individuals, together with troopers and civilians, on both facet of the border, and displaced some 800,000, officers mentioned.
Reporting from a temple internet hosting internally displaced individuals in Thailand’s Sisaket province, Al Jazeera’s Jack Barton mentioned the sound of combating echoed across the space.
“We will nonetheless hear the combating … [including] the outgoing Thai artillery and the incoming Cambodian Grad [rockets],” he mentioned.
The clashes have shattered a ceasefire pushed by United States President Donald Trump that ended 5 days of bloody fight in July.
Trump, who used the specter of commerce tariffs as leverage to finish the combating, has additionally tried to intervene within the newest clashes, claiming final week that the 2 international locations had agreed to a ceasefire starting Saturday evening.
However each day combating has continued for the reason that newest outbreak of violence started, and Bangkok has denied Trump’s declare of a truce.
No strain for ceasefire: Thai PM
Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul advised journalists that there was no worldwide strain for a ceasefire, the Reuters information company reported on Tuesday.
“Nobody is pressuring us. Who’s pressuring whom? I don’t know,” he mentioned, declining to reply a query on whether or not Trump was making an attempt to make use of the specter of tariffs to encourage Bangkok to finish the combating.
In the meantime, Thai authorities had been looking for a strategy to repatriate as much as 6,000 residents who had been stranded by Cambodia’s closure of a checkpoint within the metropolis of Poipet.
Hun Sen, Cambodia’s influential former chief and present Senate president, mentioned the closure aimed to guard civilians from what he claimed was indiscriminate firing by Thai forces within the space.
Surasant Kongsiri, a spokesperson for the Thai Ministry of Defence, mentioned there had been “steady combating throughout the border” in eight border provinces, whereas Cambodia’s Ministry of Defence pledged its troops would “proceed to face sturdy, courageous and steadfast of their struggle in opposition to the aggressor”.
