Phnom Penh, Apr 13 (UNI) A Cambodian Mine Action Center (CMAC)'s expert team has found a war-left U.S.-made MK-82 aerial bomb in the Mekong River in southern Kandal province, a mine clearance chief said on Saturday.

CMAC's director-general Heng Ratana said the Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) expert team discovered the bomb and safely removed it on Friday.

"The MK-82 aerial bomb, weighing around 230 kilograms, was found on April 12 in the Mekong River in Kandal province when the water levels had dropped," he announced the find in a Facebook post.

According to the official, since the start of the year, the EOD expert team had unearthed and safely removed five MK-82 aerial bombs and one 350-kilogram M117 aerial bomb in different provinces such as Kampong Cham, Kampong Speu, Kandal and Preah Sihanouk.

In a Facebook post on Feb. 27, Ratana said an estimated more than four million tonnes of aerial bombs and 27 million cluster bombs had been dropped on some 115,273 locations throughout Cambodia by more than 500,000 U.S. bombing missions between mid-1965 and 1973.

"This is the remnants of war and we strongly believe that the Cambodian people will continue to live with this kind of threat for many decades to come!" he said.

Cambodia is one of the countries that suffered most from mines and unexploded ordnances (UXOs) as the result of three decades of war and internal conflicts from the mid-1960s until 1998. An estimated 4 to 6 million land mines and other munitions left over from the conflicts.

From 1979 to 2023, landmine and UXO explosions had claimed 19,822 lives and either injured or amputated 45,215 others in the Southeast Asian country, according to an official report.
UNI/XINHUA ARN