Young man gets baddly injury due to driving on mine

Phnom Penh (12 December, 2011): 23-year-old man seriously injured Friday after his excavator set off a landmine in Battambang province’s Samlot district, a former battlefield between the government and the Khmer Rouge guerrillas until late 1996.

Ak Suoy, Samlot district Police Chief, said the mine exploded while Taing Rotana was excavating land to make a new way to a villager’ new farm. He was hired by the villager and Rotana is now in Battabang hospital, Ak Suoy said.

The number of Cambodian mine victims has been decreased year by year since 1990.

On 27 November, Cambodia hosted the international conference on landmines in Phnom Penh. The conference was an opportunity both to celebrate progress to date in overcoming the menace of anti-personnel mines, and to acknowledge that much work still remains to be done to rid the world of them, said Helen Clark, the UN’s development chief at the opening ceremony.

“Overall, the progress over the last two decades of mine action in Cambodia has been impressive – with a reduction in the number of victims from 4,320 in 1996 to 286 in 2010. The invaluable experience gained here is now being shared with other countries through South-South knowledge exchanges,” she said.  (Cambodia News)