Unexploded Ordnance Removal Effort Starts in Quang Tri Province

Work to remove hundreds of unexploded ordnance left from the war began yesterday afternoon at a newly uncovered arsenal in central Quang Tri Province's Khe Sanh Township. This was the third arsenal found in the town this year, said Nguyen Van Cuong, head of the province's mobile explosive ordnance disposal team. "The 12-member team unearthed 115 shells yesterday afternoon, which have been moved to a controlled area and will be deactivated tomorrow," he said. He expected the job to finish next week. The bomb clearers' task is a dangerous one: fuses could go off at any moment and many arms have high amounts of phosphorus. Every year, mobile teams cleared more than 8,000 landmines and unexploded ordnances (UXO) in the province, according to bomb removal organization Peace Trees Vietnam. Quang Tri was the hardest-hit province during wartime. Nearly 400,000 hectares of the 461,000 hectare province still contain bombs and mines. Every year, some 2,300-2,500 hectares of land are cleared. Meanwhile, in north-central Thanh Hoa Province's Trieu Son District, the local army and authorities successfully cleared and deactivated 74 mines and bombs found by a local man dredging a pond. All the ordnance can have highly lethal effects. The two biggest items discovered weighed about 227 kilos each and measured two metres in length. (Vietnam News Mar 22)