PHNOM PENH, June 14 (Xinhua) -- A fisherman has found a war-left U.S.-made MK-82 aerial bomb in a pit lake on the western outskirts of Phnom Penh, capital of Cambodia, a mine clearance chief said on Friday.
Cambodian Mine Action Center (CMAC)'s director-general Heng Ratana said the MK-82 aerial bomb, weighing around 230 kg, had been spotted on Thursday at a pit lake in Kamboul district.
"He was catching fish, but unfortunately caught an aerial bomb type MK-82!" Ratana wrote on social media, with photographs showing a CMAC's Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) expert defusing the bomb at the lake shore.
According to the official, since the start of the year, the EOD team has unearthed and safely removed 10 MK-82 aerial bombs and one 350-kg M117 aerial bomb in different provinces including Kampong Cham, Kampong Speu, Kandal, Preah Sihanouk, and Svay Rieng, as well as the capital Phnom Penh.
Ratana wrote on social media in February that an estimated more than 4 million tonnes of aerial bombs and 27 million cluster bombs had been dropped on some 115,273 locations throughout Cambodia by more than 500,000 U.S. bombing missions between mid-1965 and 1973.
Cambodia is one of the world's worst countries that suffered from mines and unexploded ordnance (UXO) as a result of three decades of war and internal conflicts from the mid-1960s until 1998. An estimated 4 to 6 million land mines and other munitions were left over from the conflicts.
From 1979 to March 2024, landmine and UXO explosions claimed 19,823 human lives and either injured or amputated 45,224 others in the Southeast Asian country, according to an official report. ■
