Casualties from mines rise 17 per cent in Cambodia

Jan 26, 2011
DPA

Phnom Penh - Official figures showed 286 people were killed or injured by landmines and unexploded ordnance in Cambodia last year, an increase of 17 per cent over 2009.

The report from the Cambodian Mine/Explosive Remnants of War Victim Information Service said 71 people died and 215 were injured.

Chhiv Lim, a project officer for the government agency, said Wednesday that although casualty numbers had increased, the number of incidents was stable with 150 recorded in each year.

'We had one incident in which 15 people were killed or injured by an anti-tank mine in Pailin province and another in Battambang province when another 15 were killed or injured,' he said of the north-western provinces on the Thai border.

'These two cases caused a lot of casualties, but I expect that in 2011, the number will go down,' he said. 'I hope so.'

The casualty figures reversed a long-running downward trend and made last year the worst since 2007 when the country suffered 352 casualties.

The agency said half of last year's casualties came from three north-western provinces. Men comprised 60 per cent of all victims while another one-fifth were boys.

Demining experts have previously attributed the year-on-year decline in casualties to widespread demining and education efforts by the government and demining charities.

In 1999, Cambodia ratified the Ottawa Treaty, which bans the use, production, stockpiling and transfer of anti-personnel mines. While more than 150 countries have signed the treaty, China, Russia and the United States are among those that refuse to do so.

The treaty gave countries 10 years until 2009 to clear all mines from their territory. Cambodia missed that goal and was granted a 10-year extension although it is thought unlikely to reach that revised target.

Phnom Penh this week requested donors provide 24 million dollars to fund the next five-year demining plan, around the same sum it spent on the previous programme, which finished last year.

Cambodia has one of the highest disability rates in the world, a legacy of the country's decades of civil war that started in the 1960s and finished in the late 1990s.

In 1994, nearly 3,000 people were killed or injured by mines and leftover bombs.