30,000 Cambodians Flee to Thailand Border
Heavy fighting between Cambodian government troops and Khmer Rouge guerrillas drove tens of thousands of Cambodian refugees to the Thai border Friday.
About 30,000 refugees--many of them the wives and children of Khmer Rouge rebels--were massed at the border, the Thai military said. It said the border will be opened today to allow the Cambodians access to a refugee camp several miles inside Thailand. The U.N. refugee agency will help in providing shelter for the refugees, as it has in the past.
Thailand has frequently provided haven to Cambodians of various factions in the fighting that has racked its southern neighbor for two decades.
About 7,500 other Cambodians displaced by the fighting, again mostly women and children, sought refuge within their own country at a government-run camp, the U.N. World Food Program said. They joined nearly 3,000 refugees who arrived last month at the O Bai Tap camp, 30 miles from the fighting.
The refugee crisis comes just days after the U.N. refugee agency and the Thai and Cambodian governments agreed to work together to repatriate 64,000 refugees already in Thailand so they could participate in elections scheduled for July.
The elections are part of an internationally mediated settlement of the power struggle between Cambodian strongman Hun Sen and the co-premier he ousted in a bloody coup last July, Prince Norodom Ranariddh.
Ranariddh’s supporters fled to northern Cambodia where, aided in part by the Khmer Rouge, they took up arms against Hun Sen’s troops.
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