Landmine kills 14 civilians in Cambodia

Fourteen people died in western Cambodia when their homemade tractor ran over an anti-tank mine left over from the country's civil war. The incident occurred Tuesday night in Battambang province 250 kilometres northwest of the capital Phnom Penh.

“This is a horrific accident,” says Sister Denise Coghlan, who works for Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) in Cambodia, and is a founding member of the Cambodia Campaign to Ban Landmines. She says it happened “just at the time when we were hoping the accidents and casualties were going down.”

An estimated 4 to 6 million land mines and other unexploded ordnance are thought to remain in the country, but death rates from the explosives had been dropping. They are expected to rise in the future.

Sister Coghlan says this is because displaced persons seeking new homes are moving into areas before they have been cleared of mines.

Listen to Sister Denise Coghlan’s full interview with Charles Collins: