Farmer injured by UXO while working in Kratie

A MAN was seriously injured in Kratie province after a mechanical weed trimmer he was using to cut grass on his farmland hit an unexploded landmine.

The incident occurred on Sunday afternoon in the province’s Snuol district when Phalla Thoeun, 27, was clearing grass on his farm and hit the ordnance, which injured him in the head and legs, said Chan Sokin, Snuol district police chief.

“The victim got a serious head injury and the legs were badly hit. After the incident, the victim was sent to Kratie Provincial Hospital immediately,” Sokin said.

Images of the accident show Thoeun with shrapnel lodged in his legs, chest and forehead. Sokin said police officials had collected fragments of the UXO and determined it to be an M-79 landmine that was used in the 1970s.

Both government and nongovernment organisations in the Kingdom are engaged in clearing unexploded ordnance from large tracts of land contaminated by explosives left over from both Cambodia’s years of civil war and the bombing of the eastern side of the country by the United States during the Vietnam War.

According to the Cambodian Mine Action Authority, there were 39 accidents caused by mines or explosive remnants of war in 2017, resulting in 58 casualties, of which 10 were deaths. The group has also recorded a total of 64,720 UXO casualties from 1979 to December 2017, resulting in close to 20,000 deaths.