During that period, nearly 500,000 hectares were searched for unexploded explosive devices, it was known at a ceremony held here to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the founding of the Vnmac and on the occasion of the awarding to this institution of the Order of Protection of the Fatherland, third class.

In the 1960s and 1970s alone, three U.S. administrations – those of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard Nixon – dropped more than 15 million tons of bombs, landmines, and shells on Vietnam, four times more than the entire arsenal consumed in World War II.

According to Vnmac, between 600,000 and 800,000 tons of unexploded explosives remain hidden under the ground in about 18 percent of the national territory.

In fact, since 1975, when the shameful and definitive withdrawal of US troops from that nation took place, more than 40,000 people died and about 60,000 were injured and mutilated as a consequence of the explosion of some of those devices.

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