Deutsche Presse-Agentur
Friday - November 21, 1997

Grenade blast kills boy, injures 19 at Vietnam school

Hanoi (dpa) - One child was killed and 19 people were injured when a
long-dormant grenade exploded in a junior high school in the remote town of
Tra Linh, in northern Vietnam's Cao Bang province, a news report said Friday.


The newspaper Lao Dong (Labour) quoted local police as saying a student found
the grenade in a nearby paddy field Monday and was passing it around to
friends preparing for a volleyball game when it exploded.

The grenade was most likely left over from 1979, when China and Vietnam
fought a brief but fierce border war in which Chinese troops invaded northern
Vietnam but were repulsed.

Tra Linh town sits on the border with China. The explosion was the first such
incident in the district, according to an Education Department official who
asked not to be identified.

The bulk of Vietnam's unexploded ordnance remains in the central and southern
regions of the country, particularly around the de-militarized zone which
divided North and South Vietnam until the end of the war in 1975.

Dozens of Vietnamese are killed every year by bombs, mines, or grenades, most
of which are leftovers from the war with the Americans.

Seven ethnic minority students were killed and 33 were injured last April
when an American fragmentation bomb exploded near the border with Laos, also
in a school yard.