Army engineers clearing landmines at Chong Bok pass today

Supported by an armour-plated tractor, army bomb disposal personnel from the Army Engineering Corps are conducting a mine clearing operation, near the Thai-Cambodian border in the Chong Bok pass in Nam Yuen district of Ubon Ratchathani.

The operation is intended to retrieve anti-personnel landmines, thought to have been laid recently by Cambodian troops on Thai soil. The defused mines will be used as evidence to support a note to the United Nations, to be sent by the Thai Foreign Ministry, protesting Cambodia’s alleged violation of the Ottawa Convention.

An army source said that, in addition to the protest note, the Thai army is considering appropriate military retaliation for Cambodia’s provocative laying of anti-personnel mines on Thai territory.

Three Thai soldiers were injured, one of them seriously, when one of them stepped on a landmine while patrolling the Chong Bok pass on July 16th. The Second Army Region maintains that the Russian-made anti-personnel landmines are new, because the area had been almost completely cleared of old landmines, laid during the war in Cambodia more than three decades ago.

Eight new Russian-made landmines were retrieved by a Thai demining unit at the Chong Bok pass on Saturday.