Phnom Penh: Four villagers were killed and two others were wounded in a landmine explosion in northeast Cambodia’s Mondulkiri province on Saturday, a mine clearance chief said.
Heng Ratana, director-general of the Cambodian Mine Action Center (CMAC), said the war-left landmine erupted late Saturday afternoon, about 10 km from Sre Y village in Sen Monorom town, Xinhua news agency.
“According to preliminary information, four persons were pronounced dead and two others were injured in the blast,” Ratana wrote on social media.
He added that there were children among the victims.
Last month, an eight-year-old boy was killed and his two younger sisters were also seriously wounded in a landmine explosion in northwest Cambodia’s Oddar Meanchey province.
Cambodia is one of the world’s worst countries suffered from mines and unexploded ordnances (UXOs) as the results of three decades of war and internal conflicts from the mid-1960s until 1998. An estimated 4 million to 6 million land mines and other munitions left over from the conflicts.
In a social media post on Feb. 27, Ratana said an estimated more than 4 million tonnes of aerial bombs and 27 million cluster bombs had been dropped on some 115,273 locations throughout Cambodia by more than 500,000 U.S. bombing missions between mid-1965 and 1973.
From 1979 to 2023, landmine and UXO explosions had claimed 19,822 lives and either injured or amputated 45,215 others in the Southeast Asian country, according to an official report.
(IANS)
