Thursday, July 31, 2003
One dead, two injured after Vietnam War-era bomb explodes
Agence France-Presse Hanoi, July 31
A man was killed and two others injured when a bomb dating back to the Vietnam War went off in Khanh Hoa central province, police said on Thursday. The accident happened when the 36-year-old scrap metal dealer tried to take apart an American M-72 bomb, police said. His two colleagues were badly injured but were out of danger, they said.
More than five million tonnes of bombs and explosives were used by US forces during the war which ended in 1975 and hundreds of people have fallen victim to unexploded munitions every year since then.
Estimates from the Pentagon and the Vietnamese defence ministry suggest that there are between 315,000 and 720,000 tonnes of unexploded munitions lying across all or most of Vietnam's 61 provinces.
A further three million land mines are also believed to litter the countryside.
© Hindustan Times Ltd. 2003. Reproduction in any form is prohibited without prior permission