Laos ‘Bombies’ Kill and Maim 20 Years Later

Children found two metal spheres the size of tennis balls and were playing with them when the “toys” exploded, killing a 7-year-old boy and seriously wounding another child.

That was in April, in Ban Na Dee village. Nearly two decades after the air war ended, small anti-personnel bombs dropped on Laos by American planes kill and maim dozens of people a year.

The Plain of Jars, a remote region of central Laos named for the hundreds of ancient burial urns spread over its undulating hills, was one of the most heavily bombed areas of Indochina between 1964 and 1973.

American planes rained “bombies,” as the Laotians call the anti-personnel bomblets, and thousands of tons of conventional bombs on areas under the control of Laotian communist guerrillas.

The small, round bombs, designed to kill or disable people, explode and spew ball bearings, tiny darts or slivers of metal or plastic. Many that did not go off lie hidden in rice paddies and long grass throughout the Plain of Jars.

Xieng Khouang province officials said 19 people had been killed and 39 wounded by the bomblets by mid-1990. Boua Van, a provincial administrator, said more than 1,000 people had been killed in Xieng Khouang since the bombing ended in 1973, two-thirds of them children.

Western aid workers say villagers are afraid to farm in many parts of the province.

“The villagers are subsistence farmers who have to go out and dig for their living,” one Laotian official said.

“When they go out to plow their fields or dig latrines, they risk uncovering a bombie. In some cases the decision where to dig an irrigation ditch depends on whether there are bombies around.”

Some of the war’s leftovers have been welcome. Scrap merchants say they will be in business for years with the debris littering the Plain of Jars.

Kham Meuang said he sells tons of bomb scraps and aluminum from downed U.S. aircraft to buyers in Thailand and Vietnam.

Ball bearings from “bombies” can be used to repair bicycles, he said, and aircraft aluminum brings a profit of $1 a kilogram (2.2 pounds) when sold to Thai buyers.

“It’s best quality, better than the stuff they can get over there,” the merchant said.

Aluminum scrap of lesser quality is made into the spoons found in noodle stalls. Livestock wear bells crafted from bomb parts.

Under-wing fuel tanks from jet fighters have become elegant canoes in Savannakhet province.

Hmong hill people make traditional-style jewelry from aircraft aluminum, which they say is lighter, more plentiful and cheaper than silver.

Villagers say large unexploded bombs are relatively easy to avoid or defuse, but that some of the bomblets have no external fuse mechanisms and may explode without warning.

“When they are on the surface, it is not so bad, but when they are buried deep in a field it is difficult to avoid casualties,” said Boua Van, the provincial administrator.

In the Savannakhet provincial hospital, a farmer lay in agony from head, chest and foot wounds suffered when he struck a bomblet with a stick while planting rice a few weeks earlier. An X-ray showed ball bearings inside him.

The explosions usually kill the people who cause them, said Dr. Vath Vongsouthi, who has treated dozens of victims.

Boua Van said most casualties occur during the planting season, and “of course people are afraid, but when they are working they have no other choice except to try to avoid them. The children, especially, don’t know how dangerous they are.”

He said he had defused at least 500 of the bomblets, but that other people without his knowledge and luck had been killed trying it.

Local officials and Western aid workers say the U.S. government should help solve the problem.

U.S. diplomats in Vientiane said Washington did propose sending experts to train bomb disposal teams, but the government declined the offer for reasons that were unclear.