Clip reveals flood defence in northern Thailand, not border wall with Cambodia

Previous to a dramatic escalation of a long-running border row between Bangkok and Phnom Penh, footage exhibiting the development of a flood barrier in northern Thailand was shared in posts falsely claiming it depicted the dominion’s troopers constructing a wall alongside its frontier with Cambodia. Comparable footage was additionally printed by native media in regards to the development, which AFP geolocated to a river on the Thai-Myanmar border.

“Thailand is constructing partitions towards Cambodia, reviews a Khmer channel,” reads Thai-language textual content on a TikTok video posted on July 15, 2025.

The video, which has garnered greater than 460,000 views, seems to point out a wall being constructed. It reveals concrete slabs being slotted into place by a number of males carrying camouflage trousers and inexperienced shirts adorned with the phrases “Royal Thai Military”.

In line with the clip’s Khmer-language narration, it reveals an 800-kilometre border fence that Thailand was constructing alongside its border with Cambodia.

Comparable posts surfaced elsewhere on TikTok, Fb and YouTube, in addition to in a Khmer-language submit after longstanding tensions between the Southeast Asian neighbours escalated into cross-border clashes in late Could, with one Cambodian soldier killed.

Quite a few border crossings have been closed as Cambodia halted sure Thai imports, and the dominion’s Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra was suspended pending an ethics probe into her conduct after a telephone name attempting to appease the spat was leaked by ex-Cambodian chief Hun Sen (archived hyperlink).

The neighbours’ long-running border spat dramatically escalated on July 24, with Cambodia firing rockets and artillery shells into Thailand and the Thai navy scrambling F-16 jets to hold out air strikes (archived hyperlink).

Each side blamed the opposite for beginning the preventing, which erupted close to two temples on the border between the Thai province of Surin and Cambodia’s Oddar Meanchey.

The clip circulating on-line, nonetheless, was not filmed on the international locations’ shared border.

Thailand-Myanmar floodwall

A reverse picture search on Google utilizing the keyframes from the falsely shared clip and extra key phrase searches discovered an extended model of the video in a Fb submit shared on June 1 (archived hyperlink).

Its Thai-language description reads: “Let’s check out the military engineers from the Division of Navy Engineering, Ratchaburi province, laying the piles and inserting the concrete slabs”.

“Every slab takes about 3-5 minutes. This spot ought to be achieved as quickly as subsequent week,” it added.

The Fb consumer commonly publishes movies on the floodwall development in Mae Sai district of Chiangrai province in northern Thailand, which borders Myanmar (archived lin

AFP geolocated the footage to an space close to a river on the Thai-Myanmar border (archived right here and right here).

Aerial footage from a July 21 report by public broadcaster Thai PBS reveals the identical guesthouses, the place the floodwalls are reportedly virtually full (archived hyperlink).

One other video printed by the Fb consumer reveals a definite yellow constructing downstream and throughout the river (archived right here and right here).

The identical constructing is seen in a June 1 report by state media NBT in regards to the development of riverbank limitations in communities which were severely affected by flooding (archived hyperlink).

AFP has beforehand fact-checked different misinformation associated to the Thailand-Cambodia border dispute.