Cambodian government troops, backed by tanks and artillery, have seized a key border hill near where the remnants of the Khmer Rouge guerrilla group were making an apparent last stand, a Thai army officer said yesterday.
Fighting was raging as rebel leaders ordered men who had fled into neighbouring Thailand back to the battlefield, refugees and a rebel leader said.
"Phnom Penh troops have reached the hill and the Khmer Rouge have sent in fighters and small arms to try to hold them off since early this morning," the Thai officer said.
Two key border passes at Sangam and Samrong where Khmer Rouge troops are holding out were under attack by government forces yesterday.
The boom of artillery and the stutter of automatic rifle fire were clearly audible from this Thai border district.
Dozens of rounds from Cambodian government tanks had landed on the Thai side of the border in recent days, the Thai officer said.
The Khmer Rouge have come under sustained pressure since late March when a fresh wave of defections to the government began and the guerrillas lost their headquarters at Anlong Veng, about 16 km south of the Thai border.
Government commanders say more than 3,000 guerrillas have switched sides leaving only about 300 fighters still loyal to the Khmer Rouge military strongman, Mr Ta Mok. They have withdrawn to the Dongrek escarpment which forms the border with Thailand to make their stand.
Former Khmer Rouge leader, Pol Pot, under whose 1970s rule an estimated 1.7 million people were killed, died in a rebel-held border district on April 15th as government forces were pressing ever closer.
Military officials in Phnom Penh said yesterday the whereabouts of Ta Mok and other top Khmer Rouge leaders remained a mystery.
The government push into the high ground north of Anlong Veng has sent some 15,000 civilians as well as many fighters spilling across the border into Thailand over recent days.
A senior Thai army officer said the Khmer Rouge could still survive if they managed to cling on until the imminent rainy season when Cambodian government forces will have to withdraw their tanks or risk them getting bogged down in the mud. Meanwhile, the deposed coprime minister, Prince Norodom Ranariddh, returned to Cambodia yesterday, saying he wanted to prepare for a July general election and hoped to meet Mr Hun Sen, the rival prime minister who ousted him last year.
Prince Ranariddh, who has returned to Cambodia twice since late March, said shortly after stepping off a scheduled flight from Bangkok that he was back in Cambodia to stay.