Defence Ministry spokesman Rear Admiral Surasant Kongsiri presents images of a damaged Cambodia casino complex during a regular online briefing on Dec 13. - Thai Defence Ministry
O’SMACH, Cambodia: Above the vacant roads and abandoned buildings in this frontier Cambodian town, right up against the border with Thailand, rows of once-busy construction cranes now hover like statues in the sky.
An eerie quiet lingers over O’Smach, its inhabitants yet to return since fleeing intense shelling that started on Dec 8. The only activity during a recent visit by The Straits Times came from a few residents being waved through a police checkpoint to hurriedly retrieve some belongings.
One of them, local shop owner Smay Savy, waves us over to look at an unexploded artillery shell that landed in his courtyard. He then beckons us up onto a terrace with a view of O’Smach Resort, a casino and hotel complex barely 100m from the Thai border. Dozens of medium-rise buildings, most appearing to be new or nearly finished, poke through the horizon on an adjacent plot of land.
“Ly Yong Phat,” he says. “This all belongs to Ly Yong Phat.”
Empty streets in O’Smach town in Oddar Meanchey province near Cambodia’s border with Thailand. - ST/Philip Wen
O’Smach Resort and its owner, Cambodian senator and tycoon Ly Yong Phat and his LYP Group conglomerate, were sanctioned by the US in September 2024 for alleged human trafficking and forced labour while operating online scam compounds.
The Thai authorities froze and seized assets including tens of millions of dollars worth of cash, land and real estate belonging to the tycoon in Thailand in October 2025, and issued an arrest warrant for money laundering relating to online fraud the following month. Ly Yong Phat did not respond to requests for comment.
O’Smach and five other casino compounds along the border – including the Royal Hill Resort and Casino owned by prominent Cambodian businessman Lim Heng – were targets of air strikes by the Thai military, which alleged that these had doubled as covert military sites.
Thailand said the sites were used as bases for heavy weapons storage and for housing antennas for the operation of kamikaze drones. Cambodia has rejected the claims and condemned them as unwarranted attacks on civilian infrastructure.
The Royal Thai Army has framed the strikes on the scam compounds as not just part of a border conflict but also with the wider purpose of “confronting global crime”.
“This is not a border war; it is a war against the Scam Army,” it said on Dec 17, 2025.
“The impact of the Scam Army is not confined to any single region – it extends to people, businesses and national security systems worldwide. For this reason, Thailand does not stand on the battlefield to retaliate against a neighbour. Thailand stands on the front line to protect regional stability and contribute to global security.”
ST interviewed nine Cambodian workers of the sprawling O’Smach compound now living in displacement shelters in nearby towns. They were employed in positions such as cleaners, cooks, security guards and maintenance workers. Their identities are being withheld for fear of reprisals against them.
The workers gave accounts of their chaotic escapes as their buildings came under siege from Thai shelling on Dec 8, while also providing rare first-hand insight into the tight controls and often mundane routine within the compound.
They said the compound consisted of dozens of buildings up to nine storeys high, most of which were built within the past two years.
They added that the foreign workers, mainly from China and Vietnam, but also from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia and the Philippines, were mostly segregated from the local Cambodian support staff. They worked behind closed doors in rooms full of long rows of computers, and were generally not allowed to move around unsupervised.
Rights groups and transnational crime experts say such work conditions are consistent with scam centre operations.
A 34-year-old cleaner said her Chinese employers did not let the Cambodian staff know what the other foreign workers were doing inside. “They close the door and don’t let us go in.”
Mealtimes were controlled with military precision. One cook said her kitchen prepared meals for about 250 workers in an “online client” team in just one building. She said lunch consisted of six different dishes — two meat and four vegetables — and had to be ready on the table before the half an hour that workers were allotted to eat and relax, under the watch of supervisors and guards.
“The discipline inside the building is very strict,” another worker said.
Cambodian staff said the numbers of foreign workers in their respective buildings had already been reduced by around half after the first outbreak of fighting in July, with some likely deployed to other compounds farther away from the border. But the total number of workers across all buildings remained in the thousands, they said.
When the first shells hit on the morning of Dec 8, several Cambodian workers who were present told ST their Chinese bosses told them to run for safety immediately, but that the foreigners, at least initially, were not permitted to leave.
“I ran away from the building, but at the same time, the owner did not let the foreigners run away immediately,” the cleaner said, explaining that the bosses did not think their building was being deliberately targeted, based on their experience of the previous fighting in July.
In the ensuing pandemonium, three workers said they saw one dead Cambodian security guard, with shrapnel wounds to his chest and limbs.
One male maintenance worker said he helped transport several badly wounded foreign workers, including Chinese nationals, to find medical aid, and expressed doubts over whether some of them would have survived.
Footage posted on social media at the time showed scores of people – mostly men, including some of South Asian appearance – fleeing along the highway from O’Smach.
The Cambodian workers and other eyewitnesses said convoys of vans and buses then proceeded to transport remaining workers from O’Smach over the next three days, as Thai forces continued to bombard the area with increased intensity.
Thailand and Cambodia agreed on a ceasefire that took effect on Dec 27, though villagers on both sides of the border remain on edge.
Back in O’Smach today, there is a sense of urgency and nervousness among residents retrieving their belongings. Rumours of Thai military snipers and looting soldiers encroaching on Cambodian soil proliferate.
Cambodia’s foreign minister said on Jan 13 that the Thai military was still “occupying territories well inside Cambodia”. Thailand rejects the accusations and says its troops abide by agreed de-escalation measures.
However, it underlines the deep distrust that prevails among the border residents. The overwhelming majority of Cambodian border villagers ST interviewed, including those who have returned home, remain convinced that the ceasefire will be short-lived.
Of the more than 640,000 civilians displaced at the height of hostilities, about a quarter, or more than 155,000, remain in emergency shelters as at Jan 13, according to Cambodia’s Interior Ministry. On the other side of the border, more than 400,000 Thai civilians were displaced during the conflict.
In Banteay Meanchey province, Ms Sen Chany and her three children were among just a few households staying behind at what once was one of the largest displacement shelters in the area. The 43-year-old said she had returned to her village to collect some things nearly two weeks after fighting broke out, only to experience heavy bombing and shelling that night.
“I’m still afraid of more fighting. We don’t trust the Thai soldiers – not at all,” she said.
Meanwhile, the O’Smach maintenance worker said he had wanted to be a soldier but was rejected for not meeting minimum height requirements. Nonetheless, he added that he stayed behind to volunteer at the front lines by ferrying supplies to the soldiers.
He offered an unvarnished account of the horrors of conflict, and of his outgunned compatriots being unable to effectively respond to the superior tanks and fighter jets from Thailand.
“Yes, we suffered, we are very upset. They have more force, and we didn’t have the heavy weapons to respond,” he said.
“The Thais used many different fighter jets to drop bombs. I couldn’t help but cry as I saw even the mountains shake.” - The Straits Times/ANN
