‘Microphone’ bomb kills four Cambodians

A drunk Cambodian man accidentally detonated an old grenade that he was using as a pretend microphone, killing himself and three other men and wounding three women, police said Tuesday.

The rocket-propelled grenade, a remnant of the country’s decades of war, exploded on Sunday near a small gathering in Pursat province in western Cambodia, local police chief Pich Sopheap told AFP by telephone.

“The explosion occurred after a drunken man used an unexploded B-40 grenade as a microphone while he was singing and later hit it against a wooden stick,” said Pich Sopheap.

The blast killed the 30-year-old man and three male farmers instantly, and critically injured three women who were chatting nearby underneath a raised house, he said.

Cambodia, one of the world’s most heavily mined countries, is littered with unexploded ordnance from nearly three decades of civil war and the secret US bombing of the nation in the Vietnam War.

In May, five plantation workers were killed after their vehicle hit an old anti-tank mine in a former stronghold of the communist Khmer Rouge rebels.

Around 670 square kilometres (258 square miles) still needs to be cleared of explosives, Prime Minister Hun Sen said in February.