Cambodia’s Ministry of National Defence took a team of ASEAN observers to Poipet on 20 August and issued a photograph of them at a bomb-damaged warehouse in the town. The team, drawn from ASEAN member states and led by a head of mission from the Philippines, spent the morning at the Poipet International Border Checkpoint, in Kbal Spean 1 village in the commune of O’Chrov, and then at the Stung Bot International Border Checkpoint, in the commune of Phsar Kandal.
The ministry’s release says the affected locations belong to civilians who were using them for daily business, that they suffered severe damage and destruction, and that they still cannot resume trading. It attributes that to Thai F-16 airstrikes in December 2025, and places the sites in Phsar Kandal village, in the commune of the same name, about 8.2 kilometres from the Poipet checkpoint. The ministry said missions of this kind are essential to upholding the ceasefire agreements, and called for the observer team’s role and mandate to be strengthened. The release records no finding of the observers’ own about what the buildings were.
The team was established from ASEAN member state personnel under terms of reference signed at the Kuala Lumpur Joint Declaration of 26 October 2025. The ceasefire took effect at noon on 27 December 2025 under a joint statement of the third special meeting of the Cambodia-Thailand General Border Committee, whose paragraph 12 has both sides recognising the team’s role and agreeing to strengthen it.
Cambodia’s Ministry of Interior recorded the December strike on the day it happened. On the morning of 18 December 2025, it said, three bombs from Thai F-16s fell into a civilian residential area at Phsar Kandal village, damaging one building, the southern section of a warehouse roof and other property, and leaving two people with minor injuries.
At a joint briefing that afternoon, the Thai defence ministry spokesman, Rear Admiral Surasant Kongsiri, said Thai forces had acted at 11:15 that morning against a Cambodian build-up inside a warehouse in the area outside Poipet town, near the border with Sa Kaeo province. The air force spokesman, Air Vice Marshal Chakkrit Thammawichai, said the air force had not struck Poipet town. The target, he said, was a store of arms, ammunition and explosives being used as a base for BM-21 rockets, the ammunition for a truck-mounted multiple launcher, and the area around it had been checked and no civilians were living there. The foreign ministry’s deputy spokeswoman, Maratee Nalita Andamo, said Thai nationals in Poipet had been contacted and were safe.
Cambodia’s record puts the damaged warehouse in a residential area of Phsar Kandal, about 8.2 kilometres from the crossing. Thailand’s puts the store it hit outside the town, near the border.