Thai Army Second Lieutenant Baramee Sricha was on a patrol near a disputed stretch of the border between Thailand and Cambodia on July 16, when a member of his team stepped on a landmine that detonated, severing his ankle.
The incident was a catalyst to five days of hostilities, opens new tab between the neighbours, which ended with a U.S.-brokered ceasefire. It also sparked a diplomatic row over PMN-2s - a Soviet-origin anti-personnel mine that litters parts of Cambodia and which Phnom Penh and Bangkok have pledged by treaty not to use.
Thailand accuses Cambodia of laying the mines along parts of their joint frontier and says PMN-2s have maimed at least six Thai soldiers since July, including the member of Baramee's patrol.
Cambodia denies the accusations. It says that some Thai soldiers stepped on non-PMN-2 ordnance planted during a decades-long civil war that left it as one of the world's most heavily mined countries.
Phnom Penh has since positioned itself as a global advocate against the use of landmines. It has invested some $1 billion alongside foreign donors over the past 30 years in demining operations.
Any use of anti-personnel mines by Cambodia, where tens of thousands have been killed or maimed by such ordnance since 1979, would mark a disappointing reversal in decades of public commitments, said Yeshua Moser-Puangsuwan of Landmine Monitor, which is part of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines.
It would also come as some European nations threatened by Russia pull out of the Ottawa Convention, opens new tab, which bans the use of anti-personnel landmines. They join major powers like Washington, Moscow and Beijing, which are not signatories to the treaty.
Thailand's military provided Reuters with access to videos and photographs of what it said were subsequent PMN-2 demining operations carried out by its troops around the site of the July 16 incident, as well as another border-area mine blast on July 23.
During an August visit to frontline Thai military units, the news agency took photos of shrapnel that service members said they recovered from those incidents, as well as images of dozens of intact mines Thailand said were retrieved from along the border area.
Reuters examined the metadata on seven of the supplied images, which show they were taken at the same time as Thai demining operations carried along the frontier between July 18-23 that were listed in two undated military documents about landmines on the border seen by the news agency.
The metadata did not include location information and Reuters was not able to confirm independently where the images were taken.
Four independent landmine experts, asked by Reuters to evaluate the material, said the images depicted PMN-2s that had been freshly laid. However, the analysts were not able to determine who placed the ordnance.
The Cambodia Mine Action and Victim Assistance Authority (CMAA), a governmental agency that oversees demining activities, told Reuters that a determination on the incidents could only be made after an impartial third-party investigation. Cambodia's military does not have stockpiles of live anti-personnel mines, it added.
CMAA's First Vice President Ly Thuch, who reports directly to Prime Minister Hun Manet, said visual appearance alone is not conclusive proof of age.
“Environmental and disturbance factors can make long-buried items appear relatively fresh,” he told Reuters.
A Thai foreign ministry spokesperson said Bangkok's investigations had determined that the landmines that injured its soldiers were newly planted PMN-2s: “They were found in new condition, still with clearly visible markings."
Bangkok is a longtime U.S. ally which did not have widespread access to Soviet-origin munitions and says it has never deployed the PMN-2.
The defence ministry of Russia, which previously said it stopped manufacturing PMN-2-type mines in the late 1990s, did not respond to Reuters’ questions.
The incident was a catalyst to five days of hostilities, opens new tab between the neighbours, which ended with a U.S.-brokered ceasefire. It also sparked a diplomatic row over PMN-2s - a Soviet-origin anti-personnel mine that litters parts of Cambodia and which Phnom Penh and Bangkok have pledged by treaty not to use.
Thailand accuses Cambodia of laying the mines along parts of their joint frontier and says PMN-2s have maimed at least six Thai soldiers since July, including the member of Baramee's patrol.
Cambodia denies the accusations. It says that some Thai soldiers stepped on non-PMN-2 ordnance planted during a decades-long civil war that left it as one of the world's most heavily mined countries.
Phnom Penh has since positioned itself as a global advocate against the use of landmines. It has invested some $1 billion alongside foreign donors over the past 30 years in demining operations.
Any use of anti-personnel mines by Cambodia, where tens of thousands have been killed or maimed by such ordnance since 1979, would mark a disappointing reversal in decades of public commitments, said Yeshua Moser-Puangsuwan of Landmine Monitor, which is part of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines.
It would also come as some European nations threatened by Russia pull out of the Ottawa Convention, opens new tab, which bans the use of anti-personnel landmines. They join major powers like Washington, Moscow and Beijing, which are not signatories to the treaty.
Thailand's military provided Reuters with access to videos and photographs of what it said were subsequent PMN-2 demining operations carried out by its troops around the site of the July 16 incident, as well as another border-area mine blast on July 23.
During an August visit to frontline Thai military units, the news agency took photos of shrapnel that service members said they recovered from those incidents, as well as images of dozens of intact mines Thailand said were retrieved from along the border area.
Reuters examined the metadata on seven of the supplied images, which show they were taken at the same time as Thai demining operations carried along the frontier between July 18-23 that were listed in two undated military documents about landmines on the border seen by the news agency.
The metadata did not include location information and Reuters was not able to confirm independently where the images were taken.
Four independent landmine experts, asked by Reuters to evaluate the material, said the images depicted PMN-2s that had been freshly laid. However, the analysts were not able to determine who placed the ordnance.
The Cambodia Mine Action and Victim Assistance Authority (CMAA), a governmental agency that oversees demining activities, told Reuters that a determination on the incidents could only be made after an impartial third-party investigation. Cambodia's military does not have stockpiles of live anti-personnel mines, it added.
CMAA's First Vice President Ly Thuch, who reports directly to Prime Minister Hun Manet, said visual appearance alone is not conclusive proof of age.
“Environmental and disturbance factors can make long-buried items appear relatively fresh,” he told Reuters.
A Thai foreign ministry spokesperson said Bangkok's investigations had determined that the landmines that injured its soldiers were newly planted PMN-2s: “They were found in new condition, still with clearly visible markings."
Bangkok is a longtime U.S. ally which did not have widespread access to Soviet-origin munitions and says it has never deployed the PMN-2.
The defence ministry of Russia, which previously said it stopped manufacturing PMN-2-type mines in the late 1990s, did not respond to Reuters’ questions.
