PORIMOL PARMA

More than 150 Bangladeshi migrant workers have been displaced by the Thailand–Cambodia conflict, which has entered its second week.

The migrants said they had been working at a construction site close to the Thai-Cambodian border but fled the area on December 9 following bombings.

“We were absolutely terrified as part of the site we were working at was damaged by bombing,” said Ronju Mia, 37, now sheltered at an immigration detention centre in Cambodia, speaking to The Daily Star over the phone yesterday.

The conflict, rooted in a long-standing dispute over colonial-era demarcations along the countries’ 800-kilometre frontier, has already claimed at least 25 lives and forced more than half a million residents on both sides to flee their homes, according to an Al Jazeera report.

The migrant community has not been spared.

Ronju said he and other Bangladeshi workers had been working at the site for more than two months, having previously stayed in Phnom Penh.

“We had no idea our site could be the target of bombing,” he said.

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