page_title: Unexploded ordnance
section_title: Laos
hierarchical_section_title: Unexploded ordnance / Around the world / Asia / Southeast Asia / Laos
caption_attribution_description: English: Bomb crater left after a circa 1000 lb (0.4 tonne) US Air Force UXO exploded without warning, north of Xépôn, Laos. The bomb had penetrated and become buried in soft ground beneath the center of a local access road, midway between two about villages 500 metres (550&#160;yd) apart. There were no injuries.
context_page_description: Unexploded ordnance, unexploded bombs, and explosive remnants of war are explosive weapons that did not explode when they were employed and still pose a risk of detonation, sometimes many decades after they were used or discarded. UXO does not always originate from wars; areas such as military training grounds can also hold significant numbers, even after the area has been abandoned. UXO from World War I continue to be a hazard, with poisonous gas filled munitions still a problem. When unwanted munitions are found, they are sometimes destroyed in controlled explosions, but accidental detonation of even very old explosives also occurs, sometimes with fatal results.
  Seventy-eight countries are contaminated by land mines, which kill or maim 15,000–20,000 people every year. Approximately 80% of casualties are civilian, with children the most affected age group. An estimated average of 50% of deaths occurs within hours of the blast. In recent years, mines have been used increasingly as weapons of terror against local civilian populations specifically.
  In addition to the obvious danger of explosion, buried UXO can cause environmental contamination.
context_section_description: Laos is considered the world's most heavily bombed nation. During the period of the Vietnam War, over half a million American bombing missions dropped more than 2 million tons of ordnance on Laos, most of it anti-personnel cluster bombs. Each cluster bomb shell contained hundreds of individual bomblets, "bombies", about the size of a tennis ball. An estimated 30% of these munitions did not detonate. Ten of the 18 Laotian provinces have been described as "severely contaminated" with artillery and mortar shells, mines, rockets, grenades, and other devices from various countries of origin. These munitions pose a continuing obstacle to agriculture and a special threat to children, who are attracted by the toylike devices.
  Some 288 million cluster munitions and about 75 million unexploded bombs were left across Laos after the war ended.  From 1996–2009, more than 1 million items of UXO were destroyed, freeing up 23,000 hectares of land. Between 1999 and 2008, there were 2,184 casualties (including 834 deaths) from UXO incidents.
caption: Bomb crater left after a circa 1000 lb (0.4 tonne) US Air Force UXO exploded without warning in southern Laos in the year 2000.
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