Over 140 pieces of UXO found at Pursat school
A FARMER preparing a plot of land for a vegetable garden found a cache of unexploded 60mm mortar rounds left over from the 1970s on the campus of a secondary school in Pursat province’s Kandieng district over the weekend.
After the farmer uncovered 24 rounds, experts from the demining NGO HALO Trust visited the site and found another 117 pieces of ordnance on Sunday evening, said Buth An, a Kandieng district police officer in charge of explosives. The demining team safely detonated 89 rounds, An said.
Sman Makara, HALO Trust’s head of ordnance, said his team will return to Plov Luong commune to detonate the remaining 52 in the next few days.
“Those ordnances are made in the US and left from the war in the 1970s,” Makara said.
Kangan Secondary School Principal Chhut Chhun said he had been “really scared” when the unexploded ordnance was found at the campus.
“However, it is very fortunate that those ordnances did not explode, or else I cannot imagine how many teachers and students would be injured because of them,” Chhun said.
Last month, one teacher and three students in Oddar Meanchey province’s Anlong Veng district were injured after an old 60mm mortar round exploded on their campus. The blast was believed to have been triggered by a trash fire burning on the ground where the mortar was buried.