Two weeks ago, Pheap Sreymean had just gotten up in her dorm in a scam center in the Cambodian border town of O’Smach, when she said her supervisor ran in shouting, “The bombs are coming!”
Two Thai warplanes were circling overhead. Ms. Pheap, a Cambodian, was running for safety when she heard an explosion behind her. She said she saw a security guard dead on the ground, bleeding with pieces of shrapnel in his chest. Two other guards were also injured.
Ms. Pheap, 20, delivered food within the sprawling compound to the people, all foreigners, who ran the scams and were confined to their desks and dorms. The rules remained the same when the bombs fell. “The foreign workers were not allowed to leave,” she said.
The hostilities were part of the latest flare-up of a decades-old border dispute between Thailand and Cambodia. Thailand said the attack on Dec. 8 was a strike on a complex that was a covert military hub housing drones. In the following days, it bombed at least five other compounds that it said were military targets. But locals described them as scam centers, which in recent years have become a pillar of Cambodia’s economy.
Cambodia has said four “casinos” were damaged by the Thais but has not released any information of casualties. Pen Bona, a spokesman for the Cambodian government, rejected Thailand’s accusation that these were military hubs.
“Thailand always finds excuses to violate Cambodia’s territory and attack civilians and infrastructure,” he said. “It is unacceptable.”
This second round of deadly clashes this year between Thailand and Cambodia has been more intense, with dozens dead and more than 750,000 people displaced.
Now Thailand is casting the border conflict as “a war against the Scam Army.” The messaging is an effort to cast Thailand as a force for good against a sprawling industry that has swindled billions of dollars from unsuspecting victims the world over, even as some of its own politicians have come under scrutiny for their links to Cambodia’s scam kingpins.
But the shelling of these compounds has alarmed the United Nations and activists who warn that thousands of people trafficked to the compounds for forced labor have been put at further risk. Thailand, they argue, is targeting places that are known to be populated with thousands of people, and Cambodia has done little to help these workers who have been trapped there in the first place.
“Neither government wants to answer the question of: ‘Where are the victims?’” said Jacob Sims, a visiting fellow at Harvard University’s Asia Center and an expert on transnational crime.
The United Nations said previously that at least 100,000 people are forcibly involved in online scams in Cambodia. Many are from Southeast Asia, South Asia, and parts of Africa.
One influential Thai politician, Newin Chidchob, who is the mentor of the caretaker prime minister, Anutin Charnvirakul, said he believed the catalyst for this month’s fighting was the Thai government’s move to freeze roughly $300 million worth of assets of scammers with alleged links to Cambodia’s de facto leader, Hun Sen, and his son, Prime Minister Hun Manet.
“It’s not just scammers creating problems for Thais; they create problems for the whole world,” he said.
Mr. Pen said that Thailand has used the scam issue to “create trouble with Cambodia for political popularity.”
The toll from the Thai airstrikes at the O’Smach compound remains unclear. But videos posted on social media showed scores of people leaving the complex with their luggage. Some were surveilled by their Chinese bosses and told that they had to continue working for them, according to a manager in the compound, who asked for anonymity for fear of retribution.
Many of the Cambodians working there made their way to makeshift shelters, where they sleep in fields under plastic tarps. In Siem Reap Province, they have had to move from place to place because the Thais are bombing bridges near these evacuation sites.
A security guard who kept watch outside an office inside the O’Smach compound echoed Ms. Pheap’s account. He declined to be named because he feared losing his job but said his bosses had locked up the foreign workers when the shelling started.
He said he worked at a building that the Cambodians called “Animal Farm,” and that he guarded an office of 15 people, mainly Vietnamese and Chinese. The workers had to ask him for permission to use the toilets and were only allowed to leave to have lunch at the restaurants within the compound.
Six workers inside the compound detailed a range of human rights abuses that they witnessed at work: They spoke of seeing numerous workers beaten with shock batons, whipped with belts, made to stand for hours in the sun, forced to carry barrels of water on their backs for hours, and injected with serum. One of them reported seeing dozens of people beaten to death.
Their claims could not be independently verified, but they fit a pattern that has been documented by rights activists.
Air Chief Marshal Prapas Sornchaidee, the assistant commander in chief for the Royal Thai Air Force, said the Thai military “cares a lot” about civilians who are stranded in these buildings. “We have to answer for our actions, not just to the media, but to the world,” he said.
He declined to provide proof that these buildings were military hubs, saying the information was classified. But he said that the attacks were part of a plan to “use force to end the conflict.”
The O’Smach strike hit buildings that are next to a casino resort owned by Ly Yong Phat, a senator and a wealthy Cambodian tycoon on whom Washington imposed sanctions in 2024 for his role in rights abuses related to the treatment of trafficked workers in a scam compound. Mr. Ly did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
Satellite imagery shows that the compound had expanded exponentially in the past two years.
On Saturday, Thai jets struck a scam complex linked to the Cambodian tycoon Try Pheap in Pursat Province, saying it was a weapons depot. In 2019, the United States imposed sanctions on him over large-scale corruption and illegal logging.
The attacks are unlikely to dismantle the scam industry in Cambodia, according to Montse Ferrer, a researcher with Amnesty International.
“It’s truly the tip of the iceberg,” she said. “We’re talking about three or four scamming compounds in the realm of at least a hundred.”
Mr. Sims, the anti-trafficking expert, estimates that the revenue generated from these operations in Cambodia could exceed $12 billion a year, representing about a third of the country’s gross domestic product.
The United States and rights groups have criticized the Cambodian government for complicity in the industry. But the international community, including Washington, has said little about the Thai airstrikes. This, the Thai military has suggested, was tacit approval from governments struggling with an industry that has looted many of its citizens.
Asked for comment, the White House referred to a State Department statement that said the United States continues to call on Cambodia and Thailand to end hostilities and implement the peace agreement that was signed in Malaysia in October.
Kittiphum Sringammuang contributed reporting from Bangkok and Phuriphat Dejsuphong from Buriram Province in Thailand.
Sui-Lee Wee is the Southeast Asia bureau chief for The Times, overseeing coverage of 11 countries in the region.
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