UXO uncovered

More than 100 pieces of unexploded ammunition were discovered yesterday by employees of a private road construction company in Kampong Speu’s Oral district.

Workers found 107 mortar shells while clearing the road in Trapaing Chor commune, Oral district chief Chem Sarim said.

“It may be ordnance left from the civil war,” he said.

Police forces had collected the 120mm shells and postponed road construction as they searched for more, he said.

Heng Rattana, director of the Cambodian Mine Action Centre, said CMAC staff already had been sent to collect the ordnance and would destroy it soon.

Up to six million pieces of UXO left from the civil war in the 1970s still need to be cleared from 1,700 square kilometres of land in Cambodia, CMAC secretary Chum Bunroung said at the National Mine Conference last week.

More than 64,000 people were killed or disabled by UXO in Cambodia between 1979 and 2012, according to the Cambodian Mine Action Authority.