A rocket-propelled grenade believed to be more than 25 years old killed two cousins, a girl and a boy both 2 years old, when it blew up Saturday near their homes in rural northwestern Cambodia, officials said.
The accident happened in Siem Reap province’s Svay Leu district, where there had been heavy fighting in the 1980s and 1990s between Cambodian government soldiers and rebel guerrillas from the communist Khmer Rouge. The group had been ousted from power in 1979.
Muo Lisa and her male cousin, Thum Yen, lived in neighboring homes in the remote village of Kranhuong. Their parents were doing farm work when the two toddlers apparently came across the unexploded ordnance and it detonated. Experts from the Cambodian Mine Action Center determined afterwards from fragments that it was a rocket-propelled grenade.
Old unexploded munitions are especially dangerous because their explosive contents become volatile as they deteriorate.
“Their parents went to settle on land that was a former battlefield, and they were not aware that there were any land mines or unexploded ordnance buried near their homes,” CMAC Director-General Heng Ratana said. “It’s a pity because they were too young and they should not have died like this.”
Some 4 million-6 million land mines and other unexploded munitions are estimated to have littered Cambodia’s countryside during decades of conflict that began in 1970 and ended in 1998.
Since the end of the fighting in Cambodia, nearly 20,000 people have been killed and about 45,000 injured by leftover war explosives. The number of casualties has declined over time; last year there were 49 deaths.
“The war is completely over and there is fully peace for more than 25 years, but the blood of the Khmer (Cambodian) people continues to flow because of the remnants of land mines and ammunition,” Heng Ratana said on his Facebook page.
Cambodian deminers are among the world’s most experienced, and several thousand have been sent in the past decade under U.N. auspices to work in Africa and the Middle East.
Cambodia’s demining efforts drew attention earlier this month, when U.S. financial assistance for it in eight provinces was suspended due to President Donald Trump’s 90-day freeze on foreign assistance. Heng Ratana said Thursday he had been informed that Washington had issued a waiver allowing the aid — $6.36 million covering March 2022 to November 2025 — to resume flowing.