Thailand demands unilateral ceasefire announcement from Cambodia 

Thailand has demanded Cambodia must be the first to declare a halt in fighting in order to bring an end to the latest round of clashes between the southeast Asian neighbours.

“As the aggressor onto Thai territory, Cambodia must announce the ceasefire first,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maratee Nalita Andamo said during a briefing in Bangkok on Tuesday, the AFP news agency reported.

She added that Cambodia must also cooperate “sincerely” in efforts to clear landmines in the border regions.

There was no immediate response from Cambodia. Each country has blamed the other for instigating the clashes, claiming self-defence and blaming the other for attacks on civilians.

Dozens killed

Fighting between the neighbours, prompted by longstanding rival claims to territory along their 817km (508-mile) land border, was reignited by a skirmish on December 7.

The renewed clashes at various locations have killed at least 32 people, including soldiers and civilians, on either side of the border, and displaced some 800,000, officials said.

Reporting from a temple hosting internally displaced people in Thailand’s Sisaket province, Al Jazeera’s Jack Barton said the sound of fighting echoed around the area.

“We can still hear the fighting … [including] the outgoing Thai artillery and the incoming Cambodian Grad [rockets],” he said.

The clashes have shattered a ceasefire pushed by United States President Donald Trump that ended five days of bloody combat in July.

Trump, who used the threat of trade tariffs as leverage to end the fighting, has also attempted to intervene in the latest clashes, claiming last week that the two countries had agreed to a ceasefire beginning Saturday night.

But daily fighting has continued since the latest outbreak of violence began, and Bangkok has denied Trump’s claim of a truce.

No pressure for ceasefire: Thai PM

Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul told journalists that there was no international pressure for a ceasefire, the Reuters news agency reported on Tuesday.

“No one is pressuring us. Who is pressuring whom? I don’t know,” he said, declining to answer a question on whether Trump was attempting to use the threat of tariffs to encourage Bangkok to end the fighting.

Meanwhile, Thai authorities were trying to find a way to repatriate up to 6,000 citizens who had been stranded by Cambodia’s closure of a checkpoint in the city of Poipet.

Hun Sen, Cambodia’s influential former leader and current Senate president, said the closure aimed to protect civilians from what he claimed was indiscriminate firing by Thai forces in the area.

Surasant Kongsiri, a spokesperson for the Thai Ministry of Defence, said there had been “continuous fighting across the border” in eight border provinces, while Cambodia’s Ministry of Defence pledged its troops would “continue to stand strong, brave and steadfast in their fight against the aggressor”.