Unexploded ordnance from the Vietnam War is still killing people working in former battlefield zones, local people say.

“Old bullets, shells and bombs kill or injure hundreds of local people including children, even though the Vietnam War ended in 1975,” Tran Duong, a resident in Quang Dien district of Thua Thien-Hue province, told ucanews.com.

Most victims die from explosions triggered while they work in fields, or dig foundations for new buildings, Duong, 63, said.

Others die while scavenging battlefields for old bullets and shells to sell as scrap.

Many children die trying to extract explosives from old munitions, he added.

The farmer said that in 2001 a bomb exploded taking off his left foot and killing his friend as they worked in a tobacco field.

Father of five, Paul Nguyen Hoanh, said that local people want the munitions to be removed so they can work their farms safely and to protect their livestock.

His 18-year-old son died in 2002 while digging a hole to build a house.

Father Joseph Phung Van Tue, pastor of Thach Binh parish, said that many local people are forced to leave to look for jobs in the cities as they have little cultivable land that is free from munitions.

Life will improve once these are removed, giving local people more land to grow rice, sweet potatoes and manioc, Father Tue said.

The parish, which numbers 500 Catholics out of a local population of 20,000, provides food, scholarships and clothes to children who used to scavenge for old munitions.

Local media have reported that the German government will offer 374,000 euros (US$483,000) to Thua Thien-Hue province to remove unexploded ordnance from over 500,000 hectares of land.

Unexploded munitions have reportedly claimed 10,500 lives and injured 12,000 people in Vietnam’s six central province since the war’s end.

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