CHBAR MON, Cambodia (AP) — A funeral was held Sunday for 20 soldiers who died at an army base in southwestern Cambodia in a huge explosion of stored munitions that also wounded several others and damaged nearby houses.
There has been no public explanation of what caused the Saturday afternoon blast at the base in Kompong Speu province, though there were no suggestions it was triggered deliberately.
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CHBAR MON, Cambodia (AP) — A funeral was held Sunday for 20 soldiers who died at an army base in southwestern Cambodia in a huge explosion of stored munitions that also wounded several others and damaged nearby houses.
A roof of a nearby residence is seen damaged after an ammunition explosion at Prey Beng village in Kampong Speu province, Cambodia, Sunday, April 28, 2024. An ammunition explosion at a base in southwestern Cambodia on Saturday afternoon killed multiple soldiers and wounded several others, Prime Minister Hun Manet said. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)
A nearby resident collects fragments falling from the roof of his house after an ammunition explosion at Prey Beng village in Kampong Speu province, Cambodia, Sunday, April 28, 2024. An ammunition explosion at a base in southwestern Cambodia on Saturday afternoon killed multiple soldiers and wounded several others, Prime Minister Hun Manet said. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)
Chim Sothy, a nearby resident, stands under the damaged roof at his house after an ammunition explosion at Prey Beng village in Kampong Speu province, Cambodia, Sunday, April 28, 2024. An ammunition explosion at a base in southwestern Cambodia on Saturday afternoon killed multiple soldiers and wounded several others, Prime Minister Hun Manet said. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)
In this image from a video, smoke rises above a distant base, seen from Chbar Mon district in Kompong Speu province, Cambodia Saturday, April 27, 2024. An ammunition explosion at a base in southwestern Cambodia on Saturday afternoon killed multiple soldiers and wounded several others, Prime Minister Hun Manet said. (Chim Sothea via AP)
In this image from a video, smoke rises above a distant base, seen from Chbar Mon district in Kompong Speu province, Cambodia Saturday, April 27, 2024. An ammunition explosion at a base in southwestern Cambodia on Saturday afternoon killed multiple soldiers and wounded several others, Prime Minister Hun Manet said. (Chim Sothea via AP)
Defense Minister Tea Seiha, representing Prime Minister Hun Manet, presided over the Buddhist funeral ceremony, which was attended by relatives of the victims and fellow soldiers. Cambodian flags covered the wooden coffins.
A villager living nearby told The Associated Press on Sunday that he trembled after hearing the blast because he had never before experienced such a loud explosion.
“When the explosion happened, I was fixing my house with some construction workers,” said Chim Sothea. “Suddenly there was a loud explosion, causing my house to shake and breaking tiles on my roof. They fell down but luckily they didn’t fall inside the house.”
Images showed several badly damaged buildings on the base, at least one with its roof blown off, and soldiers receiving treatment in a hospital. Other photos showed nearby houses with holes in their roofs.
Four buildings on the base — three for storage and one work facility — were destroyed and several military vehicles damaged, Col. Youeng Sokhon, an army officer at the site, said in a report to army chief Gen. Mao Sophan.
Another villager, who asked to be named only as Sophal, said the military closed the road to the base and “villagers were in a panic, seeking a safe place.” He moved his family to his parent’s home, farther away from the base. When he returned to his own house hours later, he found it undamaged but other villagers’ houses had broken windows, doors and roofs, he said.
Cambodia, like many countries in the region, has been suffering from an extended heat wave, and the province where the blast took place registered a high of 39 C (102 F) on Saturday. While high temperatures normally can’t detonate ammunition, they can degrade the stability of explosives over a period of time, with the risk that a single small explosion can set off a fire and a chain reaction.
In March 2005, a nighttime blast at an arms depot in the northwestern provincial town of Battambang triggered an hourslong spray of shells and bullets, killing at least six people and causing panic.
A 2014 report by the Swiss-based group Small Arms Survey highlighted the dangers of poorly stored or mishandled munitions, calling it a “global problem.” It noted that from 1979 through 2013 there were more than 500 incidents involving unplanned explosions at munitions sites.
FILE - Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Manet attends the East Asia Summit at the Association of the Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit in Jakarta, Indonesia, Thursday, Sept. 7, 2023. Cambodia’s prime minister says 20 soldiers have been killed and several others injured in an ammunition explosion at a base in the southwest of the country. Hun Manet said in a Facebook post that he was “deeply shocked” when he received the news of the explosion Saturday afternoon at the base in Kampong Speu province. (Yasuyoshi Chiba/Pool Photo via AP, File)
A roof of a nearby residence is seen damaged after an ammunition explosion at Prey Beng village in Kampong Speu province, Cambodia, Sunday, April 28, 2024. An ammunition explosion at a base in southwestern Cambodia on Saturday afternoon killed multiple soldiers and wounded several others, Prime Minister Hun Manet said. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)
A nearby resident collects fragments falling from the roof of his house after an ammunition explosion at Prey Beng village in Kampong Speu province, Cambodia, Sunday, April 28, 2024. An ammunition explosion at a base in southwestern Cambodia on Saturday afternoon killed multiple soldiers and wounded several others, Prime Minister Hun Manet said. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)
Chim Sothy, a nearby resident, stands under the damaged roof at his house after an ammunition explosion at Prey Beng village in Kampong Speu province, Cambodia, Sunday, April 28, 2024. An ammunition explosion at a base in southwestern Cambodia on Saturday afternoon killed multiple soldiers and wounded several others, Prime Minister Hun Manet said. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)
In this image from a video, smoke rises above a distant base, seen from Chbar Mon district in Kompong Speu province, Cambodia Saturday, April 27, 2024. An ammunition explosion at a base in southwestern Cambodia on Saturday afternoon killed multiple soldiers and wounded several others, Prime Minister Hun Manet said. (Chim Sothea via AP)
In this image from a video, smoke rises above a distant base, seen from Chbar Mon district in Kompong Speu province, Cambodia Saturday, April 27, 2024. An ammunition explosion at a base in southwestern Cambodia on Saturday afternoon killed multiple soldiers and wounded several others, Prime Minister Hun Manet said. (Chim Sothea via AP)
Israel’s leaders commemorated Memorial Day on Monday, a usually somber holiday that this year was almost entirely absorbed by the ongoing war in Gaza.
At 11:00 A.M., sirens announced two minutes of silence, and a formation of four fighter planes then flew over Jerusalem and the surrounding areas. At a ceremony, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed once again to defeat Hamas, a promise he has made repeatedly during Israel’s brutal seven month war with the militant group.
More than 300,000 Palestinians fled Rafah over the weekend as Israeli forces pushed deeper into the southern city, according to U.N. estimates.
Israel says Rafah is the last stronghold of the Hamas militant group and vowed to launch a full-scale invasion of the city, but the U.S. says a Rafah offensive would jeopardize cease-fire talks and threatened to halt more military aid to Israel. Some 1.4 million Palestinians — over half Gaza’s population — had sought refuge in the city.
Israel also pounded Gaza's devastated north, where some Hamas militants have regrouped in areas the military said it had cleared months ago.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken reiterated U.S. opposition to a major military assault on Rafah on Sunday, telling CBS that Israel would “be left holding the bag on an enduring insurgency” without an exit from Gaza and postwar governance plan.
The death toll from the war in Gaza has soared to more than 35,000 people, most of them women and children, according to local health officials. Israeli bombardments and ground assaults have caused vast destruction to apartments, hospitals, schools and refugee centers across several cities.
The war began Oct. 7 when Hamas attacked southern Israel, killing around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting about 250 others. Israel says militants still hold around 100 hostages and the remains of more than 30 others.
Currently:
— Israel moves deeper into Rafah and fights Hamas militants regrouping in northern Gaza.
— Blinken delivers some of the U.S.'s strongest public criticism yet of Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza.
— U.K. foreign secretary David Cameron says halting arms sales to Israel would only strengthen Hamas.
— With the shock of Oct. 7 still raw, sadness and anger grip Israel on its Memorial Day.
— Pro-Palestinian protests dwindle on U.S. campuses, as some college graduations are marked by defiant acts.
Here's the latest:
CAIRO — U.N. officials say 360,000 Palestinians have fled Rafah in the past week amid Israel’s intensified assault on the southern Gaza city, and aid agencies are rushing to distribute dwindling food supplies to the newly displaced people.
Abeer Etefa, a spokesperson for the U.N.’s World Food Program, said Monday that 38 trucks of flour had arrived through the Western Erez Crossing, the second access point now operating to the largely devastated northern sector of the Gaza Strip. But no food has entered the two main crossings in southern Gaza for the past week.
The Rafah crossing into Egypt has been closed since Israeli troops seized it a week ago, while fighting in Rafah city has made it impossible for aid groups to access the nearby Kerem Shalom crossing with Israel.
The main U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, said Monday that so far 360,000 people have fled Rafah, where some 1.3 million Palestinians had been crowded for weeks after fleeing Israel’s onslaught elsewhere in the Gaza Strip.
Etefa said WFP is distributing food from its remaining stocks in the areas of Khan Younis and Deir Balah further north to which many of those escaping Rafah have fled but that the situation is becoming “increasingly unsustainable.”
Almost the entire population of Gaza relies on humanitarian groups’ distribution of food and other supplies to survive. Amid Israeli restrictions and obstacles to aid distribution from violence, some 1.1 million Palestinians in Gaza face catastrophic levels of hunger, on the brink of starvation, and a “full-blown famine” is taking place in the north, according to the U.N.
JERUSALEM — Israel’s military said Monday that four of its troops were injured in missile fire from southern Lebanon, as cross-border exchanges of fire with Hezbollah militants continue.
Hezbollah acknowledged the strike, saying its forces struck and destroyed an Israeli tank in the Yitfah area, northern Israel, around a kilometer from the Lebanese border.
The Israeli army said one of the soldiers was moderately injured, and all were taken to hospital. No further information was immediately available.
Hezbollah and Israel have traded fire on a near-daily basis along the border since the start of the war in Gaza seven months ago.
The Shiite force, which controls vast swathes of southern Lebanon, says it is acting in solidarity with the Palestinian militant group Hamas, whose deadly Oct. 7 attack into southern Israel triggered the war.
Israeli strikes have killed more than 350 people in Lebanon, most of them fighters with Hezbollah and allied groups but also including more than 50 civilians. In Israel, strikes from Lebanon have killed at least 10 civilians and 12 soldiers.
JERUSALEM — Israel’s leaders commemorated Memorial Day on Monday, honoring the country’s fallen soldiers and those killed in attacks on a holiday that was almost entirely absorbed by the ongoing war in Gaza.
The usually somber calendar event has been compounded by the sadness and simmering public anger over the failures of Oct. 7, when Hamas fighters from Gaza broke into southern Israel and killed 1,200 people, mostly Israelis, the act that sparked the war. The holiday began Sunday evening and continues until nightfall on Monday.
During the day’s opening ceremony at Mount Herzl cemetery on the outskirts of Jerusalem, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed once again to defeat Hamas, a promise he has made repeatedly during Israel’s brutal seven month war with the militant group.
“We are determined to win this struggle, we exacted and will exact a high price from the enemy for their criminal acts, we will realize the goals of victory and at the center of them the return of all our hostages home,” Netanyahu said from the podium.
Israel responded to Hamas’ deadly October assault by bombarding and invading Gaza, killing over 35,000 Palestinians from the enclave according to the Hamas-run health Ministry. More than 600 Israeli soldiers have been killed since the war erupted.
Among the other attendees at Mount Herzl was the Israeli President, Isaac Herzog.
At 11:00 A.M. on Monday, sirens announced two minutes of silence, and a formation of four fighter planes then flew over Jerusalem and the surrounding areas.
Israeli army chief Herzi Halevi, front left, listens to a message during a ceremony marking Memorial Day for fallen soldiers of Israel's wars and victims of attacks at Jerusalem's Mount Herzl military cemetery Monday, May 13, 2024. (Gil Cohen-Magen/Pool Photo via AP)
Israeli army chief Herzi Halevi attends a ceremony marking Memorial Day for fallen soldiers of Israel's wars and victims of attacks at Jerusalem's Mount Herzl military cemetery Monday, May 13, 2024. (Gil Cohen-Magen/Pool Photo via AP)
An Israeli soldier knees next to the national flag during the celebrations of the Israel's annual Memorial Day for the fallen soldiers at the site where revelers were killed and kidnapped on Oct. 7 cross-border attack by Hamas militants at the Nova music festival near the kibbutz Reim, southern Israel, Monday, May 13, 2024. Israel marks the annual Memorial Day for fallen soldiers and victims of nationalistic attacks. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
An Israeli soldier stands still to observe two minutes of silence as air raid sirens sound marking the Israel's annual Memorial Day for the fallen soldiers, at the site where revellers were killed and kidnapped on Oct. 7 cross-border attack by Hamas militants at the Nova music festival near the kibbutz Reim, southern Israel, Monday, May 13, 2024. Israel marks the annual Memorial Day for fallen soldiers and victims of nationalistic attacks. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
Israelis observe two minutes of silence as air raid sirens sound to mark Israel's annual Memorial Day for the fallen soldiers who died in the nation's conflicts and victims of nationalistic attacks at the Armored Corps memorial site in Latrun, Israel, Monday, May 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
Palestinians displaced by the Israeli air and ground offensive on the Gaza Strip walk through a makeshift tent camp in Deir al Balah, Gaza, Sunday, May 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Palestinians mourn their relatives killed in the Israeli bombardments of the Gaza Strip in front of the morgue of the Al Aqsa Hospital in Deir al Balah, Gaza Strip, on Sunday, May 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Palestinians mourn their relatives killed in the Israeli bombardments of the Gaza Strip in front of the morgue of the Al Aqsa Hospital in Deir al Balah, Gaza Strip, on Sunday, May 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Palestinians mourn their relatives killed in the Israeli bombardments of the Gaza Strip in front of the morgue of the Al Aqsa Hospital in Deir al Balah, Gaza Strip, on Sunday, May 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses a ceremony marking Memorial Day for fallen soldiers of Israel's wars and victims of attacks at Jerusalem's Mount Herzl military cemetery Monday, May 13, 2024. (Gil Cohen-Magen/Pool Photo via AP)
People pray during celebrations for the Israel's annual Memorial Day for the fallen soldiers, at the site where revellers were killed and kidnapped on Oct. 7 cross-border attack by Hamas militants at the Nova music festival near the kibbutz Reim, southern Israel, Monday, May 13, 2024. Israel marks the annual Memorial Day for fallen soldiers and victims of nationalistic attacks. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
An Israeli soldier knees next to the national flag during the celebrations of the Israel's annual Memorial Day for the fallen soldiers at the site where revelers were killed and kidnapped on Oct. 7 cross-border attack by Hamas militants at the Nova music festival near the kibbutz Reim, southern Israel, Monday, May 13, 2024. Israel marks the annual Memorial Day for fallen soldiers and victims of nationalistic attacks. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
