Ornamental bomb shells in Xieng Khouang Province

United States Airforce bombing data map of Xieng Khouang Province.

Among the 8 districts,the most intensely bomb is Pek also called Paek district(No:1) where the administrative capital Phonsavan is located.

Phookood District(No:2) has 90% contamination of bombings.

Phaxay District(No:3) was also hit badly and Kham District(No:4) together with Nong Het District(No:5) experienced a trails of bombings right to the HoChiMinh trail along the Vietnam border.

 Khoun(No:6),Maukmai(No:7) and Thathon(No:8) has mild infiltration.

In Laos, victims have encountered an amazing range of unexploded ordnance(UXO), including experimental models of cluster submunitions.

The most common forms of submunitions encountered were the BLU-24, the BLU-26, the BLU-61, and the BLU-63. Of these, the most common bomblet found in Laos is the BLU-26. For example, villagers and clearance personnel discovered 133 BLU-26 bomblets and two large bombs under the school yard in the village of Ban Khangnhao, Xieng Khouang province in April 1995.From 1964 to 1973, Laos endured one of the most intensive bombing campaigns in history, as the US attempted to destroy the social and economic infrastructure of the Pathet Lao communist forces.

Part of the larger war in Indochina, the US bombing attempted to block the flow of supplies over the Ho chi Minh trail which went through southern Laos.

In addition, the US bombed northern Laos in support of Royal Lao Government military campaigns.

 On January 10, 1998, seven children were killed instantly, and one seriously injured, in Namsai Village, Xieng Khouang Province. The children, ranging in age from four years to age eleven, found a cluster bomb while looking for wood in an adjacent forest. They brought the bomb into the village where they tried to take it apart. It exploded, killing three children from the same family, along with four cousins.

 Cluster munitions are indiscriminate. Cluster munitions kill long after a war is over. Cluster munitions should be banned.

During the war, the US dropped over 6 million conventional bombs and likely well over a 100 million cluster bomblets.

 The 580,000 bombing missions flown over Laos equaled one bombing mission every eight minutes ‘round the clock, for nine full years.

 In Xieng Khouang Province, one of the most heavily bombed areas, an estimated 300,000 tons of bombs were dropped, equaling more than two tons per inhabitant.

A 1971 US Information Service refugee survey found that at least 80% of the victims were civilians. The BLU-24/B bomblet, designed during the Vietnam conflict to penetrate jungle canopy before exploding, was referred to by the Vietnamese as an “orange” due to its shape.

It is a 1.6 pound cyclotol-filled antipersonnel fragmentation bomblet made of cast nodular graphitic iron. The CBU-25 dispensed the BLU-24/B. According to the Federation of American Scientists, BLU-26 submunitions are delivered by the CBU-75 Sadeye cluster bomb: The CBU-75 Sadeye is a cluster bomb unit filled with 1,800 one-pound bomblets such as the BLU-26.

This submunition is a cast steel shell with aerodynamic vanes and 0.7 pound of TNT in which 600 razor-sharp steel shards are imbedded.
The BLU-26 can be equipped with fuses to explode upon impact, several yards above ground, or some time after landing. It is lethal up to about 40 feet.
The CBU-75 has a total lethal area more than double that of a standard 2,000-pound bomb, the equivalent of 157 football fields.

According to Mines Advisory Group demining teams, the BLU-26 contains 300 small iron ball bearings. The BLU-61/B is a spherical, grenade-like anti-personnel fragmentation bomblet about the size of a tennis ball. The CBU-49 carries 217 submunitions, while the CBU-52 carries 254.

 The CBU-52, loaded with 220 antimaterial, antiperso[n]nel [BLU-61/B] bomblets, weighs 785 pounds and can be used with a variety of proximity fuzes or the mechanical MK-339 timed fuze.

The submunition is a 3.5-inch spherical bomblet weighing 2.7 pounds with a 0.65-pound high-explosive warhead. The CBU-58 is loaded with 650 bomblets.

These [BLU-63/B] bomblets contain 5- gram titanium pellets, making them incendiary and useful against flammable targets. The CBU-52, -58 and -71 all use SUU-30 dispensers, a metal cylinder divided longitudinally.

One-half contains a strong back section that provides for forced ejection and sway-bracing. The two halves lock together. Four cast aluminum fins are attached at a 9~degree angle to the aft end of the dispenser and are canted 1.25 degrees to impart spin-stabilized flight.

When released from the aircraft, the arming wire/lanyard initiates the fuze arming and delay cycle. At fuze function, the fuze booster ignites and unlocks the forward end of the dispenser. Ram air action on the dispenser forces the two halves apart, instantaneously dispensing the payload and allowing the bomblets to spin-arm and self-dispense. A total of 17,831 were expended during the Gulf War.
Because of the air war, many Lao villagers fled to the larger cities where they lived in refugee camps. A significant number, however, stayed near their villages, living in caves and forests in order to escape the bombing.

Many of these villagers lived in caves for years, doing their field work under cover of darkness, and hiding their cooking fires so they would not be seen by the bombers. Villagers in Xieng Khouang repeatedly assert that the air war did not distinguish between military and civilian targets, and that any sign of life or activity risked an attack by the bombers Ironically, these were the areas of heaviest bombing, and consequently the areas most infested with unexploded ordnance.

According to estimates of ordnance clearance agencies working in Laos, “there were probably in excess of nine million BLU 26 bomblets still unexploded at the end of the war.

The Tourist Information Office in Phonsavan has a few of these bomb shells displayed near the entrance.

Tragically, as Lao villagers moved back to their villages and farms after the war, they were to discover that the war had not ended for them.

 Unexploded cluster bombs which were buried in the soil, hidden in the weeds, or lying exposed on top of the soil exacted a grim toll of suffering and death.

Fourteen of Laos’ provinces are affected by UXO, and 25% of the country’s villages remain severely contaminated.

Because of the proliferation of cluster bomblets, and the central role of agricultural activity in the lives of most villagers, it is not unusual to encounter families who have suffered multiple cluster bomb accidents.

 In addition to the emotional burdens this places on the survivors, multiple accident families often find themselves in very difficult economic circumstances. Sometimes children are orphaned, and must be placed in the care of other relatives.

Sometimes a family loses its primary laborer, and must depend on relatives or other villagers for help.

Ironically, the high percentage of youthful casualties almost certainly means that a majority of those injured or killed by the cluster bomblets had not yet been born when the bombs fell.

 Year after year,children were killed and or injured while playing and working, farmers killed and injured while tilling their fields.

In May 1996, 15 year old Ton Kemla’s plow hit a long-hidden cluster bomblet that exploded and ripped apart his genitals while tilling the family rice paddy behind a water buffalo .

On May 18, 1995, nine year old Tao Yer Ver was tending cattle in Keth Tetsabahn, Muong Nonghet with his brother and sister when he discovered a bombie, which he picked up and threw.
He was killed instantly.
The very same month, four children herding cattle tried unsuccessfully to pry open a bomblet to use the shot inside for their slingshots.
They enlisted 12 year old Yeng Hen’s help, who was killed instantly after he threw the bombie against hard soil.




  On March 18, 1995, 15 year old Thao Mee struck a bombie while beginning to dig a fish pond in his family’s rice paddy in Ban Koua, Muong Khoune, Xieng Khouang.

The bombie’s explosion “made Thao Mee’s face and his body, his legs and his arms full of shrapnels,” according to the accident report.

 He was taken to hospital the following day. He stopped breathing and had to be revived. Within three weeks, his right arm had to be amputated. While follow-up medical care was needed, his family ran out of money after selling off all of their chickens and pigs to pay for treatment.