10 tons of ammo salvaged from sunken ship

 


Buth Reaksmey Kongkea 

Cambodian Mines Action Center (CMAC) deminers recently removed more than 3,000 Unexploded Ordinances (UXOs) from a sinking warship buried in the bottom of the Mekong River in Prey Veng province’s Peam Ro district.

CMAC’s Director General Heng Ratana said yesterday that CMAC’s  de-miners started collecting and moving the bullets and UXOs from ammunition carrier buried inside the bottom of the River in Peam Ro district on May 15. 

Ratana said that this was the third ammunition ship found in Peam Raing commune’s Boeng Ka-aek village, in Peam Ro district.

Ratana noted that since salvage operations started CMAC’s deminers had moved more than 3,000 UXOs including more than 1,000 bullets weighing more than 10 tons from the ship. 


He added that according to the CMAC's plan, salvage operations will last seven months, from May to November. 

“According to the research of our Underwater Explosive Ordnance Disposal Committee, we can determine for sure that the ship was destroyed by Khmer Rouge guerrillas and sunk,” Ratana told the Khmer Times. 

“We also conclude that the sunken ship was loaded with thousands of tons of ammunition,” he said.

Ratana said that based on the information of the mixed committee, between 1970 and 1975, many Lon Nol’s ammunition carriers were destroyed and sunk by Khmer Rouge guerrillas in the Mekong River.

He said that most of the ships were sunk along the river from Cambodia to Vietnam.

He added that according to research, during the civil war in 1970s, the shipment of ammunition of the Lon Nol’s regime along the river was thousands of tons a month.






 

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