The Massacre Contiunes
May 30th 2008 02:32
By April Simpson.
Last month, on the 25th of March, in Nam Neum, Laos, three children were killed and five injured by a bomb explosion. These children were merely innocently looking for frogs and crabs in a pond when an old cluster bomb exploded.
The war ended there 30 years ago but Cluster bombs dropped then are now more deadly than ever. When they were first dropped, many didn’t explode, being cushioned by tree foliage and muddy rice paddies.
"[Laos] endured a bombing mission every eight minutes for almost 10 years," Maligna Saignavongs, head of the country's UXO Sector National Regulatory Authority said. "We have the unenviable distinction of being the most heavily bombed country on earth. Thirty-seven percent of the landmass is contaminated.”
The CBU (cluster bomb unit) 26, which was widely used in Laos, is an anti-personnel fragmentation bomb that consisting of a large bombshell holding 670 tennis ball-sized bomblets, each of which contain 300 metal fragments. If all the bomblets detonate, some 200,000 steel fragments will be propelled over an area the size of several football fields, creating a lethal killing zone.
This isn’t the first of these tragedies to occur, with people being killed nearly everyday from concealed cluster bombs. Three days before this explosion, three men were killed and two wounded in Hing Kor, when they tried to empty an artillery shell of its explosives. Selling the metal to Vietnamese traders is worth about 3,000 kip, or 35 US cents, per kg.
Poverty has fuelled a deadly trade: collecting war junk for scrap metal. What with many bomb filtering down the landscape to migrate into rice fields or farming areas, making it impossible for farmers to farm or plough safely. Laith Stevens, an Australian ex-military explosives expert said: "It keeps them poor. It makes it very hard for them to get by day by day."
Cluster bomblets become less stable - and more dangerous - as time passes. In Laos, nearly every day people are still being killed from bombs dropped 30 years ago. With an estimated 10 million (or more) unexploded cluster bombs, it could be many decades - or even centuries - until the massacre is truly over.
Last month, on the 25th of March, in Nam Neum, Laos, three children were killed and five injured by a bomb explosion. These children were merely innocently looking for frogs and crabs in a pond when an old cluster bomb exploded.
The war ended there 30 years ago but Cluster bombs dropped then are now more deadly than ever. When they were first dropped, many didn’t explode, being cushioned by tree foliage and muddy rice paddies.
"[Laos] endured a bombing mission every eight minutes for almost 10 years," Maligna Saignavongs, head of the country's UXO Sector National Regulatory Authority said. "We have the unenviable distinction of being the most heavily bombed country on earth. Thirty-seven percent of the landmass is contaminated.”
The CBU (cluster bomb unit) 26, which was widely used in Laos, is an anti-personnel fragmentation bomb that consisting of a large bombshell holding 670 tennis ball-sized bomblets, each of which contain 300 metal fragments. If all the bomblets detonate, some 200,000 steel fragments will be propelled over an area the size of several football fields, creating a lethal killing zone.
This isn’t the first of these tragedies to occur, with people being killed nearly everyday from concealed cluster bombs. Three days before this explosion, three men were killed and two wounded in Hing Kor, when they tried to empty an artillery shell of its explosives. Selling the metal to Vietnamese traders is worth about 3,000 kip, or 35 US cents, per kg.
Poverty has fuelled a deadly trade: collecting war junk for scrap metal. What with many bomb filtering down the landscape to migrate into rice fields or farming areas, making it impossible for farmers to farm or plough safely. Laith Stevens, an Australian ex-military explosives expert said: "It keeps them poor. It makes it very hard for them to get by day by day."
Cluster bomblets become less stable - and more dangerous - as time passes. In Laos, nearly every day people are still being killed from bombs dropped 30 years ago. With an estimated 10 million (or more) unexploded cluster bombs, it could be many decades - or even centuries - until the massacre is truly over.
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