Twenty-five bombs abandoned by Japanese troops during World War II have been
found in Hulin, a city in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, according to local
sources.
The first bomb was identified by patrolling police when a
student, surnamed Shan, was fiddling with a rusted bomb using an
iron rod in front of a group of other children in the middle school
of Xinle Village.
The police warned the student that the bomb had powder and a
fuse and could explode. They then stopped the student immediately
and took the bomb to a safer place.
According to Shan, the bomb was discovered by his father in a
pool on Wednesday. Police got four other bombs at Shan's home later
and 20 more in the pool.
Experts believed that the bombs were abandoned by Japanese
troops.
Chinese official statistics show Japan abandoned at least 2
million tons of chemical weapons at about 40 sites in 15 Chinese
provinces at the end of World War II, most of which are in the
three northeast provinces of Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning.
China and Japan joined the United Nations Chemical Weapons
Convention in 1997. Two years later, they signed a memorandum,
under which Japan is obliged to remove weapons by April 2007 and
provide all necessary funds, equipment and personnel for their
retrieval and destruction.
However, the Japanese government has asked for an extension of
the disposal deadline to April 2012.
(Xinhua News Agency April 9, 2007)