Cambodia’s influential former leader Hun Sen said on Tuesday that his country had retaliated in reignited border clashes with neighbouring Thailand, after Phnom Penh had denied firing back for two days.

“After being patient for more than 24 hours in order to respect the ceasefire and to allow time to evacuate people to safety, yesterday evening we retaliated with more responses last night and this morning,” Senate president and former prime minister Hun Sen said in a Facebook post.

“Our forces must fight at all points that the enemy has attacked,” he said, urging troops to “implement the strategy to destroy the enemy forces”.

“Now we fight in order to defend ourselves again,” he added.

Five days of combat this summer between the two South-East Asian nations killed 43 people and displaced around 300,000 on both sides of the border before a truce took effect.

Renewed combat this week has killed six Cambodian civilians and a Thai soldier, and wounded more than 20 others.

The two countries have blamed each other for the fresh fighting, which saw Thailand launch air strikes and deploy tanks against its neighbour on Monday.

Cambodia’s defence ministry spokeswoman Maly Socheata had insisted on Monday that Cambodian forces had not retaliated against Thai attacks.