Lao Women Work to Clear Millions of Unexploded Bombs

These women are on the frontline of a campaign to clear up to 80 million unexploded bombs in Laos.

A brave group of women is taking on the enormous task of finding and destroying millions of unexploded bombs in Laos.

The country has the terrible distinction of being the most heavily bombed nation - per head - in the world.

The United States dropped more than 260-million cluster bomblets on Laos during the Vietnam War.

Sally Sara of Radio Australia reports.

The women from the bomb clearing team use loud speakers to warn the locals there is about to be an explosion.

These women are on the frontline of a campaign to clear up to 80 million unexploded bombs in Laos.

Their metal detectors make a buzzing sound each time they find something.

Forty-six year old Phou Vong is a member of the Mines Advisory Group team working in the Lao province of Xieng Khouang.

She says she will never forget the first time she found a bomb.

“I was excited as well as frightened. I hesitated a bit, but I thought I should be glad to see it, because in a sense I was helping my people.”

The United States bombarded Laos during the Vietnam War, to cut off supply routes for the Viet Cong.

It was the equivalent of one bombing mission every eight minutes for nine years.

Many of the munitions were cluster bombs, large cases full of hundreds of smaller bombs.

Clearance worker Phou Vong says the US should do more to help clean up the deadly legacy it's left behind.

“Well, if we want to clear these bombs, I would like them to support more than what they have done so far. This is not enough because there are really a lot of bombs.”

More than four decades after the end of the war, the bombs are still taking lives and limbs.

It sounds like a nursery rhyme but the local children are learning a song that could save their lives.

They are warned not to touch the small cluster bombs, nicknamed bombies.

The small tennis ball size bombs can detonate at any time.

Australian aid worker Colette McInerney from World Education Laos says some victims lose hope.

“It can be very, very traumatic and people can go inside themselves, they don't want to talk to anyone about it. A lot of cases there are suicidal thoughts.

More than 20,000 people have been killed or injured by cluster bombs in Laos, since the war ended.

No one really knows how much time or money will be needed to destroy all the unexploded ordinance contaminating the Lao countryside.

It could be a task that takes several generations.