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Thailand has suspended the implementation of a United States-brokered peace agreement with neighbouring Cambodia after a landmine blast near their border injured two of its soldiers.

Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul said after Monday’s incident that all action set to be carried out under the truce will be halted until Thailand’s demands, which remain unspecified, are met.

“The hostility towards our national security has not decreased as we thought it would,” Anutin asserted. He did not elaborate on what Thailand’s demands were.

There was no immediate response from the Cambodian government.

Simmering

Thailand and Cambodia signed a ceasefire on the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in Malaysia last month after territorial disputes between the two Southeast Asian countries led to five days of border clashes in July.

Those hostilities killed at least 43 people and displaced more than 300,000 civilians living along the border.

The Thai army said in a statement that Monday’s mine explosion in Sisaket province injured two soldiers.

Thai Defence Minister Natthaphon Narkphanit said the army is still investigating whether the mine was newly laid.

Thailand has previously accused Cambodia of laying new mines in violation of the truce, a charge that the Cambodian government denies.

Similar landmine explosions have occurred both before and since the deal, and tension has simmered.

Under the terms of the ceasefire, Thailand should release 18 Cambodian soldiers, and both sides must begin removing heavy weapons and land mines from the border.

Natthaphon said Thailand will postpone the release of the Cambodian soldiers, initially scheduled for this week.

The two sides have reported some progress on arms removal, but Thailand has accused Cambodia of obstructing mine clearance.

Cambodia said it’s committed to all terms of the truce and urged Thailand to release its soldiers as soon as possible.

Complex issues

Thailand and Cambodia agreed to a truce mediated by Malaysia in July after US President Donald Trump threatened to impose tariffs.

The dispute is among eight conflicts that Trump has taken credit for resolving, although critics have noted that the peace deals he has helped to initiate often implant swift and simplistic ceasefires, leaving complex issues behind the conflicts unresolved and likely to reignite hostilities.

While the Thai-Cambodian truce has generally held since July 29, both countries have traded allegations of ceasefire breaches.

A riot in a prison in southern Ecuador has killed at least 31 inmates, according to prison authorities.

In a statement released on Sunday, Ecuador’s SNAI prison authority said 27 of those found dead at the Machala prison in El Oro province had been hanged. A further four died amid an armed riot that also left 33 inmates and one police officer injured.

The violence, during which residents reported hearing gunfire, explosions, and cries for help, came less than two months after 14 inmates died at the same facility in what authorities described as a dispute between gangs.

Authorities said they were still working to “fully clarify the facts”, and forensic medical personnel were on site to verify information. The conditions of the injured were not immediately clear.

The deadly day at Machala’s prison, which began at about 3:00am (08:00 GMT), marks the latest spasm of prison unrest in the South American country.

Elite police teams entered the prison immediately and regained control after the riot broke out, said the SNAI authority.

It did not specify the identities of the deceased or confirm whether the violence was another case of inter-gang fighting.

The riot is believed to have broken out amid the start of an operation to move some inmates into a new maximum-security prison, built by President Daniel Noboa’s government in another province, that is due to be inaugurated this month.

Ecuador’s prisons are among the deadliest in Latin America as overcrowding, corruption and weak control by the authorities have allowed gangs connected to drug traffickers in Colombia and Mexico to proliferate.

At the end of September, an armed confrontation at the prison in Machala left 14 inmates and a prison official dead. Days later, another 17 people were killed in a prison riot in the northern city of Esmeraldas, near the border with Colombia.

Noboa’s administration, which has pledged to take a tough stance on crime, blames the violence on rival gangs battling for dominance and territorial control.