2 killed by wartime bomb explosion in Vietnam

A Vietnamese couple was killed and their children injured when a wartime bomb exploded while the father was attempting to dismantle it at home on Monday afternoon.

The explosion in a rural village in the Central Highlands province of Kon Tum killed A Then, the 46-year-old father, on the spot.

His wife died on the way to hospital, while his children, aged 9 and 15, are receiving treatment for their injuries.

The couple had two other older children who were away from home when the tragedy happened.

Media reports cited a local official as saying that the blast was caused by a U.S. shell left over from the Vietnam War.

Neighbors said A Then found the bomb while he was fishing.

Police are investigating the incident.

Decades after the Vietnam War ended, unexploded ordnance still threatens a fifth of the country’s land mass and explosions occur frequently, killing more than 1,500 people every year and maiming and injuring 2,200 more, according to official data.

According to the United Nations, 104,000 Vietnamese people have been killed by bombs, land mines and artillery shells since the end of the war in 1975.

Many people from poor rural areas are killed by inadvertently triggering the devices, while others die trying to cut them open to resell the explosives and scrap metal.

In August, six members of a family in the central province of Khanh Hoa died in one such blast.