من الأشهر اليوم؟

Since the last bomb fell on this neutral country 50 years ago, unexploded ordnance has killed 20,000 people. And it could take 100 years to clear it allYoua Thaiyang is standing at the edge of his field in the northern Laos province of Xieng Khouang. A slight man of 61, dressed in jeans and flip-flops, he’s showing a photo of a BLU-26 submunition to a community liaison officer from bomb clearance charity the Mines Advisory Group (Mag). The rusted, innocuous looking “bombie”, the size and shape of a tennis ball, is half-hidden in a pile of leaves.Thaiyang had been burning his field that day in order to plant cassava when he spotted the BLU-26. “I was lucky, I saw it by chance – a lot of farmers around here have been killed by unexploded bombs,” he says. His near-miss is a reminder of how people here play a daily game of Russian roulette simply to farm their land. Continue reading...