Cambodia takes thousand of bullets, bombs from scrap merchants

Phnom Penh - Cambodian authorities have confiscated 6,000 bullets and more than 1,000 bombs and grenades from scrap collectors near the Thailand border, authorities said Wednesday. Police chief for O'Chrou district in Banteay Meanchey province, Ung Song Yue, said by telephone that raids on at least seven scrap metal merchants had netted the dangerous haul but the operation was still not complete.
"We will conduct an inventory Thursday but the total is likely to go higher," he said. "Cambodian scrap collectors sometimes think about money to eat with now more than their future."
An official with the Cambodian Mine Action Center, which is helping police with their work, agreed that the haul would probably be much higher than the 7,000 weapons and unexploded ordinance currently collected.
Cambodia is still recovering from a 30-year civil war and remains littered with unexploded bombs and bullets, which contain valuable metals, including copper, and provide collectors with lucrative incomes.
However, the death toll amongst scrap collectors is high and police said they feared the consequences of keeping large stashes of old and potentially unstable weapons in residential areas. Banteay Meanchey, home to several former Khmer Rouge strongholds, was the site of heavy fighting until just over a decade ago.