UNESCO Found 'Every Part' of Preah Vihear Hit. Thailand Says the Temple Was a Military Base.

PHNOM PENH — October 22, 2026: Thailand's claim that Preah Vihear was a military position must be measured against what UN experts actually found at the site: a World Heritage monument where "every part" was targeted, where architectural elements were "completely destroyed," and where the cliffs themselves may have been weakened by shelling.

The Royal Thai Army said on October 22, 2026 that Cambodian forces had converted the temple grounds into a base with mortars, artillery and ammunition stores, and that this military use stripped the site of legal protection under the 1954 Hague Convention. It characterised its own operations as self-defence under Article 51 of the UN Charter, targeting military threats only.

Cambodia has not yet replied to the October 22 statement. Its position, stated repeatedly in the past, is that the temple has never been used for military purposes and is administered by civilian heritage authorities.

The UNESCO-ICOMOS report, assembled after a March 2026 mission to the temple, offers the most detailed independent account of what happened. It recorded 562 damaged areas from the July and December 2025 clashes, found that "every part of the monument" was targeted, and described architectural elements as "completely destroyed by direct, heavy" fire or "dislocated, and/or overturned by severe blasts." It warned that "the surface of most walls is now disfigured by shrapnel impacts" and that heavy shelling "may also have weakened the cliffs, endangering their stability".



The report concluded that urgent action was needed and that Preah Vihear was "threatened by serious and specific danger," calling for multilateral negotiations to guarantee no further hostilities. UNESCO described the scale of the damage as unprecedented.

Cambodian authorities have put numbers to the destruction: 1,599 rounds fired at the temple from 501 directions, 84,800 stone fragments, 17,937 artillery fragments, 97 cluster-munition remnants and 84 items of unexploded ordnance cleared from the site. Emergency stabilisation was carried out at 20 critical locations, and more than 60,000 stones were collected.

The Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts has documented severe damage to Gopura I through Gopura V, the ancient northern staircase, and conservation projects run with US, Indian and Chinese partners, and has submitted the assessments to UNESCO and the World Heritage Committee.

Cambodia's legal case rests on the 1962 and 2013 ICJ judgments, which confirmed sovereignty over the temple and the promontory and required Thailand to withdraw its forces.


Against that record, the October 22 Thai army statement does not address the UNESCO findings, does not explain how a site documented as shattered across 562 locations functioned as a military base, and does not account for the gap between its precision-weapons claim and the damage UN experts recorded. Cambodia has previously described such allegations as an effort to distort information and shift responsibility for the destruction.

Source: Nation Thailand,

Thai PBS World,

https://thediplomat.com/2026/09/thailand-accuses-cambodia-of-stationing-troops-at-world-heritage-site-during-border-fighting#1
AKP,
https://akp.gov.kh/post/detail/382619
https://akp.gov.kh/post/detail/358678


Reported by The Khmer Daily Network