PHNOM PENH, Jan 17, 2025 (BSS/AFP) - Two Cambodian deminers have been killed
while trying to remove a decades-old anti-tank mine from a rice field, once a
battlefield between government forces and Khmer Rouge soldiers, demining
authorities said.

The two deminers were killed Thursday by "an old brutal hidden killer" while
clearing mines in northwestern Oddar Meanchey province, the government's
Cambodian Mine Action Centre (CMAC) said in a statement.

"This is the loss of professional experts who have contributed to the cause
of peace, security and the developing of Cambodian people and the country,"
CMAC said, identifying those killed as CMAC deminers Pov Nepin and Ouen
Channara.

The Southeast Asian nation remains littered with discarded ammunition and
arms from decades of war starting in the 1960s.

The United States bombed swathes of Cambodia during the Vietnam War, a
campaign that helped fuel the rise of the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime.

During the nearly three decades of conflict that followed, millions of
landmines were laid in Cambodia with tens of thousands of people killed or
maimed over the years.

Deaths from mines and unexploded ordnance are still common, with around
20,000 fatalities since 1979, and twice that number wounded.

In 2018, an Australian and a Cambodian were killed when war-era ordnance
exploded during a demining training exercise in southern Cambodia.

In August 2023, thousands of pieces of unexploded ordnance left over from
past conflict were unearthed inside a school in the country's northeast.

Prime Minister Hun Manet on Thursday shared his condolences with the families
of the victims who "actively participated in mine clearing operations... in
order to ensure that people live with safety after the war era".

At an anti-mine conference in November held in the city of Siem Riep, Hun
Manet said that since 1992, Cambodia has cleared more than 3,000 square
kilometres (741,000 acres) of landmines, destroying over a million anti-
personnel mines and three million explosive remnants of war.

More than 1,600 square kilometres of contaminated land still needs to be
cleared, he said, which leaves approximately a million Cambodians affected by
war remnants.