Thailand’s own briefing officer said its soldiers had dug anti-tank ditches there and that a battalion had taken back a position. He gave no date for either. One outlet carries that account, and Thailand’s own written item on the visit does not.
About 120 people went out to the O Smach and Chong Chom area with Thailand’s Joint Information Center, its own briefing body for this border. Thirty-seven were Thai journalists. Twenty more came from news outlets in seven countries. The rest were officials from that centre, the defence ministry, the foreign ministry and Thailand’s internal security body, along with the Thailand-side arm of the observer team for this border. The English-language reports describe observer members from the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia at the visit.
O Smach and Chong Chom are the two sides of one permanent border crossing. O Smach is the Cambodian side, in Oddar Meanchey province, and it has an international checkpoint on it. Chong Chom is the Thai side, in Kap Choeng district of Surin province. Chong Pling is another named point on the same stretch.
The director of that briefing body, an air chief marshal, led the party and spoke there. He said the Cambodian side had used the area as a base for drones, weapons and command centres involved in attacks on Thai troops. In his view that made taking control of it necessary. He said Thai troops had dug anti-tank ditches in the sector and put up defences, and he gave no date for the work. Anti-tank ditches are cut wide and deep across the ground, and he said these would stop Cambodian tanks getting in.
He also said a Thai battalion had taken back a position at Chong Pling and carried off Cambodian weapons as evidence, and that account came without a date too.
Thailand’s Government Public Relations Department put out its own written item on the same visit that day. It names who went and how many, and it sets the visit inside the agreement the two countries signed in December 2025 to stop the fighting. The ditches, the retaking and the weapons are not in it.
Taken back is the director’s word. It carries a loss and then a recovery, and neither is placed in time. The battalion is his own side’s, and one is the number he gave.
One outlet, The Nation, carries both of those accounts. Thailand says it controls the positions at O Smach. It says taking them was necessary.
Cambodia says those positions are Cambodian ground. It says Thai forces took them by force in December 2025. Its information minister said the first questions are whose ground this is, and when and how Thai forces came to control it. He said a military presence does not mark a boundary. He said suspected crime in one country gives another country’s forces no right to enter or hold ground there. That December date is Cambodia’s own, and Cambodia is the side saying it was wronged.
Their defence ministers put their names to the Joint Statement at 10.15 on the morning of 27 December 2025, and its own last line says so. The ceasefire took effect at noon. Its paragraph 6 bars provocative acts that may escalate tensions, and says this includes military activity entering the other side’s air space, territory or positions as those stood at the ceasefire. It bars building or strengthening any military works beyond a party’s own side. Its words are constructing or enhancing, and nothing in it gives anyone a way to tell when a work was built. Paragraph 3 of the same agreement says every arrangement in it is without prejudice to demarcation and to the international boundary, and sends the survey to the joint boundary commission.
The same agreement deals with online scams in one place. Paragraph 10 puts them to police work between the Cambodian National Police and the Royal Thai Police. It names that route and no other. It gives nobody the power to take or hold ground for that work. In its own words it bars no particular measure.
Every fact about the digging and the retaking came by one path. It was spoken once, by one official, on one day, and carried by one outlet. It was said in the open, to every journalist in the party, with observers standing in the same group. This desk was not in the room and has no reporter on that ground.
The observer team is the monitoring group the two countries agreed to, and both sides agreed to strengthen its role. The team has published no finding of its own about the visit. Its Philippine member told the same press pool that both sides were still keeping to the ceasefire. He said the team could draw no conclusion at this stage and would report to his superiors.
Nothing else in the record reached by 7 September 2026 carries those two accounts. Nothing in it dates the digging. Nothing in it dates the retaking at Chong Pling.
That same day Thailand’s own written item restated paragraph 2 of that December agreement in its own words. Both sides keep their forces where they are. Neither moves toward the other’s positions, patrols included.
