FACTBOX-Preah Vihar and Thai-Cambodian tensions

Fri Apr 3, 2009

Buddhist monks visit the Preah Vihear temple in the Cambodian province of Preah Vihear in July 2008. On Friday 3rd April 2009, Cambodian and Thai troops have fought heavy gunbattles on their disputed border as months of tensions boiled over, leaving two soldiers dead just days before a key regional summit.

(AFP/File/Tang Chhin Sothy)

(Reuters) - Fighting broke out between Thai and Cambodian soldiers on Friday along a disputed stretch of their border, near the 900-year-old Preah Vihear temple.

Following are four facts about the site: -- Completed in the 11th century, Preah Vihear pre-dates Cambodia's more famous Angkor Wat temple complex by 100 years.

Many say its stunning setting atop a jungle-clad escarpment overlooking northern Cambodia also eclipses its celebrated cousin as the finest of all the ruins left by the mighty Khmer civilisation.

-- Officially part of Cambodia since a 1962 World Court ruling, Preah Vihear, or Khao Phra Viharn, as the Thais call it, has been accessible mainly only from Thailand.

From Cambodia, landmines and Khmer Rouge guerrillas kept it off-limits for decades. Even after Pol Pot's forces surrendered in 1998, the track up the 600 metre Dangrek escarpment is so steep and pot-holed it's passable only by motorbike or heavy-duty four-wheel drive. After rain, you can forget it altogether.

-- The temple has stirred nationalist passions on both sides for generations.

In the run-up to the 1962 World Court ruling, Thailand's military government organised a fundraiser in which every citizen donated 1 baht to pay for Bangkok's legal team at The Hague.

It was Cambodia's bid last year to list the ruins as a World Heritage Site that sparked a flare-up in tensions. One Thai and three Cambodian soldiers died in a firefight last October.

-- Preah Vihear has witnessed its fair share of bloodshed.

The Khmer Rouge occupied the site for years, and rusting artillery pieces can still be found lying amid the ruins.

In June 1979, Thai soldiers forced 45,000 refugees from Pol Pot's "Killing Fields" to descend the heavily mined escarpment back into Cambodia.

"Several thousand died, either shot by Thai soldiers to prevent them trying to cross back, or blown up in the minefields," British historian Philip Short wrote in a seminal biography of Pol Pot.

(Editing by Darren Schuettler and Sanjeev Miglani)