Exploding ordnance kills 20 people at army base, cause remains unknown – Republic World

Smoke rises after an explosion at a military base in Camodia’s Kompong Speu province. | Image:AP

Chbar Mon: Security was tight around a military base in southwestern Cambodia on Sunday. A day after a huge explosion, twenty soldiers were killed there, others were injured and nearby houses were damaged. Security guards tried to keep media away from the site in Kompong Speu province.

Hun Manet said in a Facebook post on Saturday that he was “deeply shocked” when he received the news of the blast in the province’s Chbar Mon district. It was not immediately clear what caused this.

Panic and confusion

A villager living nearby told the Associated Press on Sunday that he trembled after hearing the blast because he had never experienced such a loud explosion.

“When the explosion happened, I was repairing my house with some construction workers,” Chim Sothea said. “Suddenly there was a loud explosion, which shook my house and broke the roof tiles. They fell, but luckily they didn’t fall into the house.”

Images from the scene showed several badly damaged buildings on the base, at least one of which had blown off, and soldiers being treated at a hospital. Other photos showed nearby houses with holes in their roofs.

Four buildings – three for storage and one work facility – were destroyed and several military vehicles damaged, Col. Youeng Sokhon, an army officer on the scene, said in a brief report to army chief General Mao Sophan posted on social media.

He added that the houses of 25 villagers were also damaged. Photos from the base showed the damaged structures in a large field, apparently with no civilian structures nearby.

Another villager, who would only give the name Sophal, told AP that he heard a sharp noise, and when he saw smoke rising from the direction of the army base, he realized it was an explosion at the weapons depot.

He then ran from the shop where he sells food and drinks back to his house to take shelter with his wife and two children.

He said the army immediately closed the road to the base and “villagers were in panic, looking for a safe place.” He then moved his family to his parents’ house, further away from the base. When he returned to his own home hours later, he found it undamaged, but other villagers’ homes had broken windows, doors and roofs, he said.

A global problem

Cambodia, like many other countries in the region, is experiencing a prolonged heatwave, with the province where the blast occurred recording a maximum temperature of 39 degrees Celsius on Saturday. Although high temperatures cannot normally detonate munitions, they can affect the stability of explosives over time, with the risk that a single small explosion can start a fire and a chain reaction.

Kiripost, an online English-language news service, quoted villager Pheng Kimneang as saying that a large explosion occurred around 2:30 p.m., followed by smaller blasts for about another hour.

In March 2005, a nighttime explosion at an arms depot in the northwestern provincial city of Battambang set off an hours-long hail of grenades and bullets, killing at least six people and sending local residents into panic.

A 2014 report from the Swiss-based group Small Arms Survey highlighted the dangers of poorly stored or mishandled ammunition, calling it a “global problem.” It was noted that more than 500 incidents involving unplanned explosions at ammunition sites occurred between 2013 and 2019.

“A single unplanned explosion at a munitions site can claim dozens of lives, injure hundreds and displace thousands,” the report said. “The damage to infrastructure can be enormous and extend over many square kilometers. Furthermore, the loss of economic activity could exceed tens of millions of dollars and have long-term impacts on livelihoods and the environment.”

Hun Manet offered his condolences to the soldiers’ families and promised that the government would pay for their funerals and provide compensation to both the dead and the wounded.

He graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and served as an army commander before being elected prime minister last year. He succeeded his father Hun Sen, who led Cambodia for 38 years before stepping down.

US Ambassador W. Patrick Murphy expressed his condolences to the families of the soldiers affected by the explosion in a message on the social platform