[sixties-l] Vietnam War Explosives Kill 10, Including Children

From: radman (resist@best.com)
Date: Fri Aug 11 2000 - 21:18:21 CUT

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    Vietnam War Explosives Kill 10, Including Children
      Updated 5:11 AM ET August 9, 2000

    <http://news.excite.com/news/r/000809/05/international-vietnam-explosions-dc>

    HANOI, Vietnam (Reuters) - Ten people, including six children, have been
    killed by Vietnam War era explosives in the
    past week, official media reported.
    The Lao Dong (Labour) newspaper said a mortar bomb exploded in the central
    province of Binh Dinh Monday, killing six
    children and injuring four others.
    It said the children found the bomb in a field and it exploded when they
    started playing with it.
    In the southern province of Binh Duong, four people were killed and three
    injured when a farmer triggered a land mine last
    week, Monday's Vietnam News reported.
    The United States and the United Nations have estimated 3.5 million mines
    are still buried in battlefields across the country
    dating from the 1940s until the 1975 communist victory in the Vietnam War.
    Much of the ordnance is a legacy of the massive U.S. involvement in Vietnam
    in the 1960s and 1970s.
    Dozens of deaths and injuries caused by war-era explosives are reported
    every year and many of the victims are children.
    The United States announced in June that it would include Vietnam in its
    global humanitarian demining program and
    provide equipment worth about $1.7 million to help detect and destroy land
    mines and unexploded ordnance.
    The province worst affected is Quang Tri in the center of the country.
    Until 1975 it abutted the demilitarized zone that
    separated communist North Vietnam from the capitalist U.S.-backed South and
    was fiercely contested.
    Mines are also still a serious problem near Vietnam's borders with China
    and Laos.



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