Cambodian soldiers guard after a firefight broke out with Thai soldiers near Preah Vihear temple in Preah Vihear province, some 543 kilometers north of Phnom Penh yesterday. Thai and Cambodian troops exchanged fire along the border killing two Cambodian soldiers, officials said, as a dispute over land near an ancient temple turned deadly.Photo: AFP

Two Cambodian soldiers were killed and two injured, while five Thais were wounded when fighting broke out yesterday over a patch of land near the Thai-Cambodia border, officials on both sides said.
"The armed clash resulted in two dead and two wounded on the Cambodian side," Cambodian foreign minister Hor Namhong told foreign diplomats in Phnom Penh, in a meeting attended by media.
"On our side we have five soldiers wounded," Thai Lieutenant General Wiboonsak Neeparn, in charge of the border area, earlier told Thailand's Channel 3 television.
The gunfight broke out between Thai and Cambodian troops at a disputed border zone, escalating a conflict that officials from both sides fear could result in a war between the neighbors.
"Fighting is going on," said Maj Prum Saroeun, a Cambodian police official. "Soldiers in the field say that Thai troops fired first and our troops fired back."
Thailand's army spokesman Sansern Kaewkumnerd said Cambodian troops fired the first shot.
The clash came a day after Cambodia's prime minister issued an ultimatum to Thailand to pull back its soldiers from disputed territory near the 11th century Preah Vihear temple.
Thailand's Foreign Ministry said it had prepared aircraft in case an order comes down to evacuate its citizens from Cambodia. There are an estimated 1,000 Thais in the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, and 500 in the city of Siem Reap.
Earlier yesterday, Thailand put jet fighters on alert at air force bases nationwide and C-130 transport planes on standby at a base in the capital, Bangkok, to evacuate Thais living in the border area "if the tension escalates to a military confrontation," Thai air force official Group Capt Montol Satchukorn said.
Cambodia's deputy defense minister, Gen Neang Phat declined to say how many Cambodian troops had been deployed in the area.
The conflict is the latest flare-up in a decades-long dispute over a contested stretch of jungle near the Preah Vihear temple. The World Court awarded the temple to Cambodia in 1962, but sovereignty over some surrounding land has never been clearly resolved.
Tensions flared July 15 after UNESCO, the UN agency, approved Cambodia's bid to have the Preah Vihear temple named a World Heritage Site, leading some in Thailand to fear that its claims over the nearby land would be undermined.
Cambodia deployed about 800 troops to the border after the UNESCO decision, and Thailand sent some 400 soldiers. Both sides pulled back most of their troops in late August, but passions flared again recently.
A brief gunfight broke out between the sides earlier this month, with one Cambodian and two Thai soldiers wounded. Both sides claimed the other fired first and blamed each other for being on the wrong side of the border. Three days later, two Thai soldiers lost legs when they stepped on land mines in the area.