Category World News

Thai bombing raids have struck near shelters for displaced people and Cambodia’s key tourist hub, Phnom Penh warns.

Cambodia said on Monday as renewed fighting between the neighbours enters its second week that Thai air attacks are reaching deeper into its territory.

Thai F-16 fighter jets dropped two bombs near camps for displaced people in the Chong Kal district of the northwestern border province of Oddar Meanchey and the Srei Snam district in Siem Reap province just south of Oddar Meanchey, Cambodia’s Ministries of National Defence and Information said.

Srei Snam, where Cambodian officials said a bridge was targeted, is about an 80km (50-mile) drive from Angkor Wat, a sprawling temple that is Cambodia’s national symbol and chief tourist draw.

Minister for Information Neth Pheaktra told the AFP news agency that it was the first time during the renewed fighting that Thailand’s military had struck inside Siem Reap province.

Fighting between the neighbours, fuelled by longstanding rival claims to territory along their shared border, was reignited by a skirmish on December 7.

The incident wounded two Thai soldiers and derailed a ceasefire pushed by United States President Donald Trump that ended five days of combat in July.

More than two dozen people along the border have been killed in the latest outbreak of fighting and more than half a million displaced, officials said.

Military officials on both sides said clashes and strikes along the border were ongoing on Monday.

Mounting losses

Thailand has made no comment on the latest Cambodian statements, but at a news conference on Monday, Thai officials delivered an estimate of the damage inflicted by their military since the fighting resumed.

They said the Cambodian losses included 12 tanks, 10 armoured vehicles, four anti-aircraft artillery systems, seven artillery pieces or mortars, five antidrone systems and five communication hubs.

Thailand said Cambodia, which is largely outgunned by its rival, has fired thousands of rockets from truck-mounted launchers at its territory.

Bangkok also said it has killed hundreds of Cambodian soldiers in the fighting.

Phnom Penh has dismissed such figures as propaganda while declining to release its own figures regarding military deaths, The Associated Press news agency reported.

Cambodia said 15 of its civilians have been killed and 73 wounded. Thailand said 16 of its soldiers and a civilian have been killed.

Mass protests have filled the streets of several Romanian cities for a fifth day in a row against alleged judicial corruption.

Thousands took to the streets of capital Bucharest and other cities on Sunday to show support for judges and prosecutors that denounced systemic abuse in the judicial system in an investigative documentary.

Aired by media outlet Recorder on Tuesday, the documentary alleged that politically backed senior judges use legal loopholes for unethical practices – including questionable acquittals. Judges and prosecutors who complain assert that they often face disciplinary action.

Roughly 10,000 people marched in Bucharest on Sunday evening, chanting “Justice not corruption” and “Independence not obedience”, according to the Reuters news agency.

Thousands of protesters also gathered in other cities across Romania, as they have each day since the protests erupted on Wednesday.

The same day, several hundred judges and prosecutors signed an open letter on social media denouncing “profound and systemic dysfunction” in the justice system.

“Truth and integrity must not be penalised but protected. Silence is not an option when the values of the profession are threatened,” said the letter, which attracted support from politicians and business leaders.

President Nicusor Dan announced he would hold consultations with members of the judiciary on December 22, saying the number of complaints regarding “an integrity problem in the justice system” indicated “things are very serious.”

Judicial corruption has been a long-running issue in Romania. The southeastern European state’s judicial system was kept under special monitoring by Brussels even after it had met the requirements to join the European Union in 2007.

That observation was lifted in 2023. The pace of anticorruption investigations has since slowed, and the judiciary has delivered some high-level acquittals that have raised concerns that the fight against corruption has waned.

Romania, which ranks poorly in Transparency International’s corruption perception index, included corruption among the main vulnerabilities in its new defence strategy adopted by parliament in November.

Several judges and prosecutors who have spoken out against systemic abuses over the years have been transferred, demoted, investigated or sacked outright.

One of the courts mentioned in the documentary, the Bucharest Court of Appeal, defended itself in a news conference last week, but one of its judges broke ranks and publicly denounced pressure behind closed doors.