Four men killed trying to saw open old bomb in Vietnam

Asia-Pacific News
Nov 18, 2009

Hanoi - Four men were killed in the province of Tay Ninh while trying to remove the explosives from a Vietnam War-era bomb for use in fishing, a local policeman said Wednesday.

The men, two pairs of brothers in their mid-20s, were attempting to cut open the bomb when it exploded, said Phan Anh Tuan, deputy police chief of the commune of Hung Thuan, where the men lived.

Tuan said the men's bodies had been dismembered by the blast. He said another man in the commune had been killed some five years ago, also while sawing apart a bomb for explosives to use in fishing.

Using explosives to catch fish is illegal in Vietnam.

Tay Ninh province, which borders Cambodia, was bombed heavily by the US Air Force during the Vietnam War. Many Vietnamese continue to saw apart old unexploded ordnance to sell for scrap, despite the danger.

According to the United Nations, 104,000 Vietnamese have been killed by bombs, land mines and artillery shells since the end of the war in 1975.