PHNOM PENH, Feb 24 (NNN-AKP) – Two toddlers were killed, in a rocket-propelled grenade explosion, in north-west Cambodia’s Siem Reap province, a mine clearance chief said yesterday.
Heng Ratana, director-general of the Cambodian Mine Action Centre, said, the war-left 66-mm (B-63) shell exploded on Saturday, in Kranhong village of Svay Leu district’s Ta Siem commune.
“Two children, a boy and a girl, were killed in the unexploded ordnance explosion,” he wrote on social media, adding that, one died at the scene and the other in hospital. He said both were two years old.
According to a witness, who is the father of a victim, the two children were playing and digging soil, and might have hit the grenade with an object that triggered the blast, he said.
Cambodia is one of the countries worst affected by landmines and explosive remnants of war (ERWs). An estimated four million to six million landmines and other munitions had been left over from three decades of war and internal conflicts that ended in 1998.
A Cambodian official report showed that, from 1979 to 2024, landmine and ERW explosions had claimed 19,834 lives and maimed 45,252 others in the country.
Ben Kiernan, a historian at Yale University and a leading scholar on Cambodia, estimated that, around 500,000 tonnes of US bombs were dropped on Cambodia between 1969-1973.– NNN-AKP
