UXO: bigger bombs rendered safe and kept for posterity

UXO: bigger bombs rendered safe and kept for posterity

Laos will begin to collect the bigger unexploded ordnance (UXO) discovered through clearance operations to keep evidence for explaining to future generations who dropped these bombs on their country and why, Director of the National Regulatory Authority (NRA), Mr Phoukhieo Chanthasomboun told the Vientiane Times yesterday.

Large bombs being held in a safe location in Saravan province.

Current practice is to explode the bombs when they are discovered in order to clear the land for agriculture but in future the NRA will work with the Lao UXO Programme (UXO Lao) to collect them.

The NRA last week organised a local press tour to Saravan province which was heavily bombed during the Indochina War from 1964 to 1973.

An explosion site used by UXO Lao in Dongbangphanay village in Lau-ngam district was one place the journalists visited. It has 69 large bombs waiting to be destroyed but these will not now be exploded, only defused to render them harmless, and then they can be collected and taken away.

The site has a 2,000 pound bomb, nine 750 pounders, 50 500 pounders and some 200 and 100 pound items.

“If we detonate them all we will not have any evidence to show our children that the bombs in Laos were dropped by America,” Mr Phoukhieo explained.

The Provincial Coordinator of UXO Lao, Mr Liammixay Keokangmeuang said that all of the bombs in this explosion site were cleared from the two districts of Ta-oy and Samuoy last month.

In Saravan, most of the bombs dropped by American airplanes were the bigger explosive devices, from 100 to 3,000 pounds, but the 500 pounders were the ones most frequently found during clearance operations.

Saravan has an area of over 1 million hectares but, of these, 600,000 hectares were contaminated with UXO items. “We have extracted and exploded more than 900 big bombs from 3,180 hectares in 15 years,” Mr Liammixay added.

Some 50 people were killed and 96 injured between 1997 and 2013, but from 1973 to 1996 it was reported that 1,010 people suffered from UXO accidents and only half of them survived.

Deputy Governor of Saravan province Mr Siheng Homsombat said that he wished to see 100,000 hectares of contaminated land cleared by the end of 2015, but this seems hardly likely when only 3,180 hectares could be cleared in 15 years.

Fourteen provinces in Laos were bombarded by enemy aircraft during the Indochina war from 1964 to 1973. Over 2 million tonnes of ordnance were dropped on the country by the warplanes, including about 288 million cluster munitions. Some 75 million unexploded bombs were left across Laos after the war finally ended.

Since 1996 UXO clearance o perations have covered almost 32,000 hectares of previously contaminated land. However, progress remains very slow, as this figure represents only 1 percent of all the land that must be cleared.

By Khonesavanh Latsaphao 
(Latest Update June 11, 2013)