Fourteen Cambodians have been killed by an anti-tank landmine left over from years of war that went off when they were travelling down a remote road, police said today.
A baby girl and nine women were among the dead in the blast which hit their trailer being pulled by a tractor late yesterday in Battambang province, in the northwest, said district police chief Bith Sambo.
"They have not used that road so often . . . this time they used a shortcut," Bith Sambo said, adding that no one knew who had planted the mine. The toll was the worst from a mine in Cambodia in 10 years.
Cambodia was embroiled in conflict from the late 1960s to the mid-1990s and all sides, including a Vietnamese army of occupation and various Cambodian factions, among them the notorious Khmer Rouge, laid mines.
More than 60,000 people have been either killed or wounded by landmines or unexploded ordnance since 1979, according to the aid group Handicap International, and Cambodia remains one of the world's most heavily mined countries.
Reuters