Cambodia : Old landmine kills 14

[Mid]

Old landmine kills 14 in Cambodia
Peter Cave

Fourteen people, including a one-year-old girl, have died after their vehicle hit an old mine planted in a field in the north-west of Cambodia.

Members of five families were killed as they were on their way back from work at a chilli farm when their driver took a shortcut through an open field and set off the mine.

Mines and other unexploded ordinance have killed more than 50 people in Cambodia this year alone.

Similar accidents have claimed almost 70,000 lives there since 1979.

xxx.xxx.xx

[dirtydog]

Whose landmine was it I wonder...

[Bower]

Very sad.
Did anyone keep maps of their own minefields ?
I guess if even the locals are not sure where is safe..........

[Thormaturge]

14 people? That's some landmine.

Such a shame to see so many innocent civilian lives ruined ... and for no purpose. Very sad.

[Rural Surin]

Very sad.
Did anyone keep maps of their own minefields ?
I guess if even the locals are not sure where is safe..........

Always tragic, these type of stories. Cambodia, like Laos, is speckled with assorted personnel ordinance throughout the countryside. As to the idea of pre-mapping mined areas? Surely your jesting....as military/militia forces had no such consciousness toward civilian populations, what makes you think that has changed? Laos, which might have had hundreds of millions of explosive ordinance placed or dropped, has deployed a systematic search and destroy model that has been ongoing for the last 10 + years....performed by soldiers alongside locals - hectare by hactare. It's deliberately slow, but efficient. Cambodia, with it's growing jobless population, could easily instill such a project. As it stands today, I understand that used, exploded, and unexploded mines/ordinance is being fetched and scavenged for it's metals and than resold - quite dangerous, naturally.

[Bower]

Very sad.
Did anyone keep maps of their own minefields ?
I guess if even the locals are not sure where is safe..........

Always tragic, these type of stories. Cambodia, like Laos, is speckled with assorted personnel ordinance throughout the countryside. As to the idea of pre-mapping mined areas? Surely your jesting....as military/militia forces had no such consciousness toward civilian populations, what makes you think that has changed? Laos, which might have had hundreds of millions of explosive ordinance placed or dropped, has deployed a systematic search and destroy model that has been ongoing for the last 10 + years....performed by soldiers alongside locals - hectare by hactare. It's deliberately slow, but efficient. Cambodia, with it's growing jobless population, could easily instill such a project. As it stands today, I understand that used, exploded, and unexploded mines/ordinance is being fetched and scavenged for it's metals and than resold - quite dangerous, naturally.

I was told in Vietnam that they mapped their minefields on retreat so as not to enter them during their expected advance. I am sure they were not alone in this region to think this way.

[Thep den]

^ How about the UXB's that are scattered all over the country. How do you map cluster bombs that have not exploded ?

[Bower]

^ How about the UXB's that are scattered all over the country. How do you map cluster bombs that have not exploded ?

The OP was about a tragedy caused by a landmine, and so clusterbombs as wicked as they are is a different subject. Feel free to start a thread about them.

[Thaihome]

Whose landmine was it I wonder...

Battambang province was the scene of some the heaviest fighting between government forces and the Khmer Rouge in the 1980s. The landmine probably was laid by a Cambodian (most likely a KR soldier) and could have been manufactured in US, China, Vietnam, the former USSR and East Germany, the former Czechoslovakia, India, Chile, South and North Korea, Thailand, Iran, Iraq, South Africa, Bulgaria, the former Yugoslavia, Hungary, and Poland
Landmines in Cambodia
TH

[Nostradamus]

The Thai Army was also responsible for heavily mining the border area with Cambodia, making it the most heavily mined area in the World at one point, just as they did with their border with Burma.

It was probably laid during by the Thai or Khmer Rouge during the period when they were allied together after the Vietnamese invasion and when Thailand offered safe refuge to Pol Pot, protecting him with a Special Forces unit at his home in Trat province while they were assisting the Khmer Rouge with incursions from Thai soil against the Vietnamese. Fearing a Vietnamese invasion on to Thai soil, they heavily mined the border area with Cambodia.

The Thai Army also committed an atrocity called the Preah Vihear Massacre where they drove thousands of fleeing Cambodian civilians off cliffs and over minefields. They were notorious for robbing, raping and killing fleeing Cambodians.

[Thaihome]

Could have also been recently laid [at that location] as there are reports that people are using them to protect their property.
TH

[Mid]

Cambodians die in tank-mine blast (1:09)

November 18 - A baby is among the dead as an anti-tank mine left over from years of war explodes in Cambodia's north-western Battambang province.

in.reuters.com

[Johnny Longprong]

How bloody tragic. All that money spent and those lives lost trying to stem the spread of the dreaded reds. Now the west is going to have to bend over whilst they beg the Chinese to revalue their currency so as to save the world.

What a bunch of dopes we have been. Whilst we have been living the high life on the back of cheap imports, and in the case of Australia, our huge raw material exports, those "sneaky" asians have slipped a long one into our rear end.

Of course whilst this has been happening compliant nations in the region have been bending over to the west in the hope that they were the winner. Bad decision boys I think.