Cambodia: Decades-old grenade kills two toddlers

Two toddlers were killed on Saturday when a decades-old rocket-propelled grenade exploded near their homes in Cambodia’s northwestern Siem Reap province, officials said.

The victims, identified as Muo Lisa and her cousin Thum Yen, both aged two, lived in neighbouring homes in the remote village of Kranhuong, Svay Leu district. 

The area had seen heavy fighting in the 1980s and 1990s between Cambodian government forces and Khmer Rouge guerrillas.

According to officials, the children’s parents were working on a farm when the toddlers came across the unexploded ordnance, which then detonated. Experts from the Cambodian Mine Action Center (CMAC) later identified the device as a rocket-propelled grenade.

CMAC Director-General Heng Ratana said the parents had unknowingly settled on former battlefield land. 

“Their parents went to settle on land that was a former battlefield, and they were not aware that there were any land mines or unexploded ordnance buried near their homes,” he said. “It’s a pity because they were too young and they should not have died like this.”

Cambodia remains heavily contaminated with unexploded ordnance from decades of conflict between 1970 and 1998, with an estimated 4 million to 6 million land mines and other munitions still scattered across the countryside. 

Since the end of the fighting, nearly 20,000 people have been killed and around 45,000 injured by war remnants, though casualties have declined over time. Last year, 49 people lost their lives.

“The war is completely over and there is fully peace for more than 25 years, but the blood of the Khmer (Cambodian) people continues to flow because of the remnants of land mines and ammunition,” Heng Ratana wrote on his Facebook page.

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Cambodia has some of the world’s most experienced deminers, with thousands deployed in recent years to assist U.N. operations in Africa and the Middle East. 

The country’s demining efforts were in the spotlight earlier this month after U.S. financial assistance was briefly suspended under President Donald Trump’s 90-day freeze on foreign aid. 

However, Heng Ratana confirmed on Thursday that Washington had issued a waiver allowing $6.36 million in funding to resume for demining operations across eight provinces.

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