Thailand and Cambodia agreed on Saturday to halt weeks of fierce border clashes, the worst fighting in years between the Southeast Asian countries that has included fighter jets sorties, exchange of rocket fire and artillery barrages.

“Both sides agree to maintain current troop deployments without further movement,” their defence ministers said in a joint statement on the ceasefire, to take effect at noon (0500 GMT), Reuters reported.

“Any reinforcement would heighten tensions and negatively affect long-term efforts to resolve the situation,” according to the statement released on social media by Cambodia’s Defence Ministry.

The agreement, signed by Thai Defence Minister Natthaphon Nakrphanit and his Cambodian counterpart Tea Seiha, ended 20 days of fighting that has killed at least 101 people and displaced more than half a million on both sides.

The clashes were re-ignited in early December after a breakdown in a ceasefire that U.S. President Donald Trump and Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim had helped broker to halt a previous round of fighting.

For more than a century, Thailand and Cambodia have contested sovereignty at various undemarcated points along their 817 km (508 miles) land border – a dispute that has occasionally exploded into skirmishes and fighting.

The latest ceasefire would be monitored by an observer team from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) regional bloc as well as direct coordination between both countries, Natthaphon said.

“At the same time, at the policy level, there will be direct communication between the minister of defence and chief of the armed forces of both sides,” he told reporters.

TRUMP INTERVENTION

Simmering tensions between the two countries came to a head in July this year, when the neighbours clashed for five days along some parts of the frontier, leaving at least 48 people dead and 300,000 displaced before Trump intervened to bring about a truce.

That ceasefire broke down in early December with the two sides accusing each other of moves that led to clashes.

Since the conflict restarted, neither Anwar – currently ASEAN chair – nor Trump were successful in stitching together another ceasefire, as fighting spread from forested regions near Laos to the coastal provinces on the Gulf of Thailand.

The renewed parleys came after a special meeting on Monday of Southeast Asian foreign ministers in Kuala Lumpur, followed by three days of talks between the warring sides at a border checkpoint, where the two defence ministers met on Saturday.

In their joint statement, the ministers agreed on the return of people displaced from affected border areas, while also underlining that neither side would use any force against civilians.

Thailand will also return 18 Cambodian soldiers in its custody since the July clashes if the ceasefire is fully maintained for 72 hours, according to the agreement.

Saturday’s pact, however, made clear that it will not impact any border demarcation activities underway between both countries, leaving the task of resolving disputed areas along the frontier to existing bilateral mechanisms.

“War and clashes don’t make the two countries or the two people happy,” Thailand’s Air Chief Marshal Prapas Sornjaidee told reporters. “I want to stress that the Thai people and the Cambodian people are not in conflict with each other.”

Three days of heavy downpours that spawned flash flooding and mudslides across Southern California subsided on Friday, as residents of homes in the hard-hit mountain resort of Wrightwood began digging out mud and assessing damage.

The holiday storm drenched the greater Los Angeles basin with up to 6 inches of rain by Friday, with 12 inches or more measured in lower-elevation mountains east of the city, according to the National Weather Service, Reuters reported.

The deluge, which began around Christmas Eve, was spawned by the region’s latest atmospheric river storm, a vast airborne stream of dense moisture siphoned from the Pacific and carried inland.

The torrential rains were accompanied by strong, gusty winds that toppled trees and power lines across the region, causing power outages. Heavy snow fell in upper mountain areas.

Even before the storm hit, authorities were issuing evacuation warnings to neighborhoods considered vulnerable to flash floods and debris flows, especially near hillsides previously ravaged by wildfires. Motorists were urged to avoid travel whenever possible.

Although rainfall was tapering off on Friday, a flood watch remained in effect for much of Southern California.

HOMES SWALLOWED IN MUD

In Wrightwood, a town of about 5,000 residents that bore the brunt of the storm in the San Gabriel Mountains northeast of Los Angeles, county safety inspectors began initial assessments of property losses.

Several dozen homes were heavily damaged by rivers of mud that poured through the town on Wednesday, and officials were on standby for additional debris flows that might occur, San Bernardino County Fire Department spokesman Ryan Beckers said.

“Evacuation warnings for Wrightwood are still in effect, and all the roads in the area are closed, except to residents,” he said.

Misty Cheng, 49, an accountant who owns a vacation home in Wrightwood, said she learned the property was being swallowed by a mudslide from a neighbor who sent her video footage.

“My house is buried in over 5 feet of mud,” said Cheng, speaking to Reuters by cellphone from her primary residence in nearby Upland, where she was staying when the slide occurred.

A stream of mud had forced its way into the house through a crushed wall of the attached garage, filling the living room. By the time she ventured back to the property herself to see the damage first-hand and salvage some belongings, the mud had hardened into a mound solid enough for her to stand on.

“I was able to get a truckload of personal items” out of the house, mostly from the second floor, which was left untouched, she said. Without flood insurance, Cheng said she started a GoFundMe page to raise money for repairs.

Aerial video footage posted online by the fire department showed clusters of homes and vehicles in the town caked in walls of mud as crews in front-loaders began clearing clogged roadways.

Beckers said emergency teams rescued a couple of dozen people who were trapped by high water and debris flows in their vehicles or homes over the holidays, but no deaths or serious injuries were reported in Wrightwood.

The Weather Service said Southern California was expected to dry out over the weekend, while across the country a major winter storm threatened to begin dumping record levels of snow over parts of New York state starting on Friday night.

The United States carried out a strike against Islamic State militants in northwest Nigeria at the request of Nigeria’s government, President Donald Trump and the U.S. military said on Thursday, claiming the group had been targeting Christians in the region.

“Tonight, at my direction as Commander in Chief, the United States launched a powerful and deadly strike against ISIS Terrorist Scum in Northwest Nigeria, who have been targeting and viciously killing, primarily, innocent Christians, at levels not seen for many years, and even Centuries!,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.

The U.S. military’s Africa Command said the strike was carried out in Sokoto state in coordination with the Nigerian authorities and killed multiple ISIS militants. An earlier statement posted by the command on X said the strike had been conducted at the request of Nigerian authorities, but that statement was later removed.

The strike comes after Trump in late October began warning that Christianity faces an “existential threat” in Nigeria and threatened to militarily intervene in the West African country over what he says is its failure to stop violence targeting Christian communities.

Reuters reported on Monday the U.S. had been conducting intelligence-gathering flights over large parts of Nigeria since late November.

Nigeria’s foreign ministry said the strike was carried out as part of ongoing security cooperation with the United States, involving intelligence sharing and strategic coordination to target militant groups.

“This has led to precision hits on terrorist targets in Nigeria by air strikes in the North West,” the ministry said in a post on X.