A 125kg unexploded bomb has been found in the southern province of Bac Lieu by workers at the Khanh Tam building material warehouse.
Lieut.-colonel Ho Van Dai, head of the Bac Lieu Military Headquaters’ sapper force, said the unexploded ordnance, which was made by the US in 1971, was inadvertently scooped from the Hau riverbed during the sand mining process in southern Can Tho City and was transported by the sand ferry to the warehouse. Earlier, on August 2, two unexploded bombs, weighing 125kg and 250kg respectively, was also found among sand transported from the Hau river to another building materials warehouse in Bac Lieu. According to Director of Vietnam’s Bomb and Mine Disposal Technology Centre Nguyen Trong Canh, many places in the country are still heavily contaminated with UXO, particularly the six central provinces of Nghe An, Ha Tinh, Quang Binh, Quang Tri, Thua Thien-Hue and Quang Ngai. Thirty years after the war, bombs and mines are still taking a heavy toll on human life. To date, over 100,000 people in Vietnam have fallen victim to UXO, of which 42,000 died. Every year, 20,000 hectares of land are cleared of UXO, yet there remains a lot of work to do before all contaminated land can be declared safe. (www.vietnamplus.vn [1] Aug 13)
