Two toddlers, cousins from neighboring homes, were killed on Saturday in rural Cambodia when a decades-old grenade blew up near their homes.
Muo Lisa and her cousin, Thum Yen died after discovering the grenade when they were playing together while their parents did farm work, and it exploded.
The grenade was left over from fighting between Cambodian government soldiers and Kmer Rouge communists in the 1980s and 90s, one of an estimated four to six million unexploded ordinances left in the area after the fighting ended.
Old unexploded munitions become more volatile as they age, making them particularly dangerous.
“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,” Director General of Cambodian Mine Action Center Heng Ratana said.
The center determined it was a rocket-propelled grenade after analyzing the fragments. “It’s a pity because they were too young and they should not have died like this.”
About 20,000 people in Cambodia have died and 45,000 have been injured since the fighting ended in 1998. As time goes on, those numbers have decreased; only 49 people died last year from unexploded munitions.
“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,” Ratana said on his Facebook page.
Cambodia has some of the most experienced deminers in the world, and they have helped other countries remove unexploded munitions.
It may be that the Guardian and other news outlets decided to write this story because U.S. aid for Cambodian demining was suspended as part of President Donald Trump's 90-day freeze on foreign aid.
Of course, the incident prompted the government to issue a waiver for the program so it can continue, Ratana told the Guardian.
It's sad that the left uses tragedies like this in an attempt to make Trump look bad.
Part of the point of freezing aid was to determine which efforts are worthwhile and which ones are wasteful.
The worthwhile efforts will no doubt be reinstated while the dead weight can be dropped.
