TROOPS FROM Cambodia and Thailand have exchanged fire for the fourth day running in a disputed border area between the two countries, near a sacred temple almost a thousand years old.

The Preah Vihear temple, dating from the 11th century, lies near the disputed eastern border between the two countries – where the exchange of fire has killed at least five civilians.

Hopes that the sides could have agreed a ceasefire were dashed overnight, when fire was exchanged both ways at about 8am local time (1am Irish time), the BBC reports.

The early-morning fire had followed a Cambodian appeal to the United Nations that it intervene to stop Thailand’s “repeat claims of aggression”.

The Bangkok Post reports Thai insistences that Cambodia was the first to fire in the current dispute, and that the tactic was aimed at encouraging other nations to take its side.

Thailand had told the UN, it adds, that Cambodia had encroached upon its territory.

China has appealed for restraint from both sides, saying it hoped the two countries could resolve the dispute “through consultation, and prevent the situation from escalation,” Xinhua reports.

Cambodia says, however, that it was provoked by heavily-armed Thai soldiers moving into a demilitarised zone – and that it was prompted to act after it arrested two Thai nationalists near the temple site on suspicion of espionage.

Though the two countries had always been uneasy neighbours, their tensions were heightened in 2008 when the United Nations declared the area around the Preah Vihear temple a World Heritage Site – prompting new disputes over who controlled the territory.

The area was ruled to be that of Cambodia by an international court in 1962.