The forgotten scars of deadly Thai-Cambodian war 2025

Renewed fighting erupted along the 800-kilometer Cambodia–Thailand border in December 2025. Featuring fighter jet sorties, missile exchanges, and sustained artillery shelling, the conflict lasted for 20 days. It followed the collapse of a July ceasefire brokered by U.S. President Donald Trump, which failed to sustainably ease tensions stemming from a century-old dispute over border temples and contested territories between the two Southeast Asian nations.



Government figures and independent sources indicated that at least 101 people were killed, including at least 30 civilians in Cambodia, one civilian in Thailand, and dozens of soldiers on both sides, and displaced hundreds of thousands of people, making it one of the deadliest conflicts in Southeast Asia in 2025.



However, on-the-ground reporting of the humanitarian crisis and the war’s impact on Cambodian civilians remained limited, due to a challenging environment for foreign media, stringent publication rules, and imbalanced international coverage of Cambodia.



Having covered the initial July clashes, the photojournalist was assigned again to document the renewed fighting in December on the Cambodian side. Despite severe media restrictions, the work aimed to present a broader picture of the war by focusing on the personal and intimate stories of Cambodian civilians who bore the brunt of a conflict they did not choose—stories often overlooked by mainstream international media.