Hun Sen expressed alarm over the news that the United States would supply cluster munitions to Ukraine to fight the Russian army, and warned that if that is true it could represent the biggest danger to the Ukrainian people for decades or even hundreds of years.

“Cambodia suffers the pain of the cluster munitions launched by the United States half a century ago, but we have not yet found a way to destroy them all,” the Prime Minister wrote on Telegram.

According to local experts, US troops dropped more than 30 million cluster munitions on Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia in the early 1970s; nearly 700 square kilometers of their territory still hasn’t been cleared of them.

US president Joe Biden approved sending cluster munitions to Ukraine, which immediately sparked a wave of criticism and alerts from NGOs, international organizations and several countries.

The cluster munitions explode in the air over a target, releasing a high number of smaller explosives (submunitions) that are supposed to explode on impact with the ground, but some do not detonate and end up creating a long-term security problem for civilians.

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