Nearly 10,000 pieces of unexploded ordnances (UXOs) have been found and destroyed during a three-month campaign in the northern mountainous province of Yen Bai.

The provincial Military Command has deployed nearly 100 officers and soldiers to p erform bomb and mine clearance on a 750 m2 site at Dong Cum village, Vinh Kien commune, Yen Binh district. M ore than 154 tonnes of UXOs were removed from the site and destroyed safely.

Lieutenant Colonel Nguyen Dinh Tao from the Provincial Military Command said that they have undertaken maximum efforts to ensure the efficiency and the absolute safety for both the involved staff and local residents during the process.

Preliminary statistics show that UXOs have claimed more than 42,000 lives and left about 62,000 injured, mostly rural people and children, in Vietnam over the last four decades.

Each year on average, more than 1,500 people die and nearly 2,300 people get injured, including many children, due to UXO-related causes.

The US army used more than 15 million tonnes of bombs and mines in the war in Vietnam, four times the amount used in World War 2. As a result, Vietnam has been listed among the countries most contaminated with UXOs.

According to the National Steering Committee for Programme 504, about 800,000 tonnes of UXOs are scattering across 6.6 million hectares, or 20.12 percent of the country’s land, mainly in the central region, putting people in danger every day.

The Technology Centre for Bomb and Mine Disposal under the Engineering Command reported that more than 88 percent of the communes in the country’s 63 provinces are polluted with UXO (7,645 out of 8,686).-VNA