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FROM THE FIELD

SUDAN: MAG destroys two 500kg aircraft bombs
16 Oct 2009 10:24:00 GMT
 Source: MAG (Mines Advisory Group)
Website: Website: http://www.maginternational.org

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The MAG Sudan Small Arms and Light Weapons team stands proudly at the Central Disposal Site, where the two 500kg bombs were demolished.
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The MAG Sudan Small Arms and Light Weapons team stands proudly at the Central Disposal Site, where the two 500kg bombs were demolished.
MAG Sudan

Background

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The two bombs found by Paul Brown of MAG Sudan's Small Arms and Light Weapons team midway along the Yei-Juba road in Lainya County, Central Equatoria, were far from ordinary.

Dropped from an aircraft in 1996, each weighed 500kg and measured approximately one metre across and three metres long.

One was located in the middle of an area containing tukuls - the small huts made from mud and grass in which villagers live - housing a community of around 200, the other lay 120 metres away in the bush.

Destroying the bombs not only would have meant evacuating 2,000 people in a three kilometre radius, but also the destruction of all tukuls in close vicinity to the bombs.

"The impact on the community of destroying the bombs in situ would have been too great," said Paul. So it was decided to remove the bombs and destroy them at a site five kilometres away.

Using an excavator donated by UNMAO (the United Nations Mine Action Office in Sudan), MAG cleared an access path to the bombs without disturbing the local community, then dug them out, lifted them and transported them to the site.

On 1 October, the bombs were safely destroyed in a demolition witnessed by representatives from the US Department of State's Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement and the Southern Sudan Demining Commission, as well as MAG Sudan.

For more on MAG's work in Sudan please visit www.maginternational.org/sudan.

MAG's work in Sudan is supported by: Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, U.S. Department of State; Canadian International Development Agency; DFID (UK Department for International Development); Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada (DFAIT); Guernsey Overseas Aid Commission; Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement, Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, U.S. Department of State; Royal Government of the Netherlands; United Nations.


[ Any views expressed in this article are those of the writer and not of Reuters. ]

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[ Any views expressed in this article are those of the writer and not of Reuters. ]

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