Over 500 explosives left over from the American War have been found at a construction site in the central province of Quang Tri.
The batch was found on October 10 while an excavator was working on a guest house project near the Thach Han River.
According to the Quang Tri Provincial Military Command, 590 explosives including mortar shells and rockets were found lying some two metres underground. Many of them were still armed and could cause fatal injures and damage.
A team from the Quang Tri Provincial Military Command had been sent to the site on October 11 to recover the explosives which were then safely defused at a demolition site nearby on October 12.
Nearly 10,000 Vietnamese soldiers lost their lives in the two battles.
By September 2016, 20 years since the war ended, as many as 8,500 people, including 30% of which that were children, had been killed or injured by bombs and mines left from the war in the province. Although 116,000 hectares had been cleared with 600,000 pieces of ammunition of various kinds defused thanks to support from many international organisations, over 390,000 hectares of land or 83.3% of the province's area remains contaminated.
