Fresh clashes along the Thai-Cambodia border are being met with grim resignation by civilians, as they flock again to makeshift shelters still standing from the last bout of combat.
Displaced children chased each other on the tarmac of Thailand’s Chang International Circuit race track, where hundreds of families were sheltering in vast silo-shaped tents.
“I want the government to deal with this decisively so it stops for good,” said handyman Boonsong Boonpimay at the racecourse in Buriram city, 70 kilometres from the fraught frontier.
“Otherwise we’ll have to keep living like this — unable to work and constantly on edge,” the 51-year-old told AFP.
Thailand and Cambodia have a long-standing dispute over portions of their boundary dating back to their colonial-era demarcation.
Five days of combat in July killed dozens of people and displaced around 300,000 on both sides of the border before a truce took effect.
But all-out fighting flared again along their jungle-clad frontier this week — with Thailand launching air strikes and Cambodia announcing retaliatory attacks on Tuesday.
At least seven Cambodian civilians and three Thai soldiers have been killed so far, according to officials, while more than 125,000 people have been evacuated on the Thai side alone.
Chang International Circuit owner Newin Chidchob told AFP he was ready for the surge of his displaced compatriots, sceptical this summer’s armistice would hold.
“After the clashes last time, when things quieted down, and villagers returned home, we did not believe it would truly be peaceful,” the former MP said.
“So we worked with the province to set up this system and prepare the site, because we felt that real peace or stability was unlikely.”
Thai and Cambodian troops laid down their arms in July after intervention by US President Donald Trump as well China and Malaysia — current chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
Conflict monitors said a follow-on pact failed to adjudicate their core conflict, but Trump nonetheless touted it as a major peace-making achievement of his presidency.
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