One dead, six injured after playing catch with Vietnam War-era bomb
One man was killed and six others injured while playing catch
with a Vietnam War-era bomb in the northern Vietnamese
port city of Haiphong, state media said.
The victim, aged around 30, found what he thought was a
tennis ball in a canal and brought it back to his house in the
Kien Thuy district of the city.
He and six friends began throwing the object at each other,
unaware that it was an unexploded bomb until it detonated
when one of them failed to catch it, the Communist Party
Nhan Dan daily said.
All the injured were between the ages of 25 and 30.
Last month three people were killed and another critically wounded in the central province of Quang Binh after
accidentally detonating a bomb in a wheat field while trying to salvage it for scrap metal.
During the war, US planes dropped millions of tonnes of bombs on the north of the country and along the
infamous Ho Chi Minh Trail used by communist North Vietnamese forces to move men and supplies into South
Vietnam.
More than 3.5 million landmines and 300,000 tonnes of unexploded munitions littered Vietnam after the more than
a decade-long war, which ended in 1975.
Hundreds of Vietnamese are killed or maimed each year in accidental explosions. Most are set off by children
playing with small cluster bombs, or by adults seeking scrap metal and gun powder.
Agence France Presse - August 11, 2002.
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