The population of Phanop village cower under a rocky overhang behind a mountain close to their village. Some of the younger children are crying and some are holding their ears for an expected explosion.

The parents are calm but anxious and the older people recount the last time they were hiding here over 30 years ago. A voice from a radio counts down: Neung! Song! Sam! A huge reverberating explosion shakes the ground and echoes off surrounding mountains followed by a crazed rush of air. A 1000 pound guided bomb has just exploded nearby.

Over two hundred people have come here today to protect themselves from shrapnel travelling at ballistic speeds as US-dropped bombs explode. This is the very spot villagers spent much of their time between 1964 and 1970 to hide from daily US air attacks. Today aircraft are not dropping bombs. The people are here because a MAG bomb disposal team is destroying the unexploded bombs littering their village.

Nestled between towering jaggered mountains close to a pass across to the nearby Vietnamese border, Phanop village was more ravaged by the war than most. The area formed a bottleneck for Vietnamese forces crossing into Laos. It was the most northern artery of the infamous Ho Chi Min trail and was relentlessly bombed for over six years.

Now 66 years old, Nyot Keomanee remembers the war years with clarity. 'I was wounded over there trying to get to this cave." He said simultaneously pointing to the river eight metres away and pulling up his t-shirt to show a mass of scar tissue. "It was so terrible, many villagers died."

62-year-old Ngorn joins the conversation: "I was wounded too." She said. "We had so little food and the children cried all the time from hunger. The Vietnamese gave us rice, one kilo for ten people per day, and the rest we had to forage for in the forest - mostly leaves and roots. But we couldn't cook. If the planes saw smoke they would bomb. Sometimes there would be no warning. They would come as low as the bamboo, then boom - they would drop bombs. Other times they would be very high dropping lots of bombs."

Phanop village is in Bourlapha district, Khamouane province. Records show that over the period there were 36,000 bombing missions in this district alone. The evidence in the village is still startlingly. Huge bomb craters are everywhere. Some are used to breed fish, others serve as wallowing holes for the buffalo. Every house utilises the remnants of war. Every bucket and watering can is made from aluminium rocket canisters and flare tubes, many with warning stickers like 'set fuses' still attached. Alloy tubes for dispensing cluster-bomblets are fashioned into ladders, aircraft fuel tanks into boats. Hundreds of casings from cluster bomb units surround the houses to help stop rainwater eroding the ground. Some are lined up to make fences or laid on the ground to serve as pig troughs. A wing of a US fighter jet lies under a house where it fell from the sky over 30 years ago. Villagers said the plane exploded in mid air and that at least another four were shot down around here.

Many of the remnants of war are deadly. Experts say up to 30% of ordnance fired or dropped will fail to explode as planned. One cluster bomb unit (CBU) disperses nearly seven hundred golf ball sized bombs - every one of them with a killing range of five metres. A glance around the village at the hundreds of empty CBUs is enough to realise the scale of the problem here. Many have died. The risks are high when hoeing the ground for agriculture and children are blown up nearly every week in Laos playing with these interesting-looking metal balls.

There were two accidents in Xieng Khuang province on 10th October. Nine people were killed. Mrs Paya lost four children and her husband in one of the accidents; "It was in the late afternoon. We were all outside. My husband was chopping wood with the children. His axe hit something under the ground and there was an explosion. I was sitting with my baby not far away. I was hit with shrapnel. So was my baby in my arms. She was killed. There were bodies and bits everywhere. I have lost everyone and everything except one son." Mrs Paya and her husband had chopped wood at the same place next to their house many times before. A neighbour's two children were also killed. In the other accident, two boys were killed playing with a bomblet.

Another risky activity is searching for scrap metal. People can get up to a dollar for a kilo of aluminium, 30 cents for a kilo of steel. Every household in Phanop has a primitive metal detector and it is a major earner for the village. It's the same in many communities across Laos and it is an activity that is impossible to stop. Most people are poor subsistent farmers and the money they earn from selling scrap goes a long way here. As described earlier, Phanop is almost built out of war scrap and they have been selling it to traders for years.

18 year-old Chai and her 12 year-old brother Song are typical. They go up to the mountains for up to a week at a time, living on rice they bring with them and bamboo shoots and roots they find in the forest. They spend the day searching and digging and bring their finds to the roadside. Traders in trucks and pickups collect the scrap from them daily. "We can make money for our family doing this and there is no other way for us to make money." Explained Chai, "I know it can be dangerous and people in the village have been killed, but we are careful."

Noukarn was killed three months ago when he struck an explosive object with his spade whilst looking for scrap metal. Two of his colleagues were also killed. His wife, Mom, who is four months pregnant, is still in a state of deep shock, her face blank and expressionless. 20 year-old Mom solemnly looks on as relatives and friends use pegs to attach money to a line adorning a bed and place offerings - fruit, vegetables and rice - on the floor close by. Candles placed strategically to form a circle on a tray connected with fine white string are lit. Monks start chanting and the congregation hold their hands together in front of their faces. This is the beginning of a spirit blessing ceremony traditionally held three-months after an unnatural death. "What future will there be for my baby?" Mom said, "How will we survive?"

Many people go about their daily chores; preparing their land for agriculture, digging for edible roots, searching for valuable scrap metal, knowing that their trowel or spade might set off a deadly explosion. This is an intolerable situation but there is a solution. The explosive remnants of war can be found and destroyed.

MAG has been working in Laos for over 10 years finding and destroying unexploded ordnance (UXO) and running awareness programmes to help people minimise the risks of an accident. Recently MAG teams began operations in Khamouane province, destroying ordnance in villages and schools, and clearing access roads to cut-off communities.

Today in this remote region of Laos, Phanop village is being visited for the first time by a MAG team. The team comprises five women technicians, a supervisor, a medic and a driver. An international technical field manager (TFM) is also here to assist. During the first day, eight large aircraft bombs and hundreds of cluster bomblets were shown to the team. Most of the large bombs were underground and had to be uncovered so that the fuses could be inspected. Some were determined to be safe to move but a number would have to be made safe by removing the fuses in controlled explosions or destroyed in situ. The cluster bomblets cannot be made safe. They have to be blown up where they lay.

19 year-old Ponchan is one of the technicians and has been working for MAG for nearly four months: "I come from Tat village about ten kilometres from here. There is so much UXO around and it is a big problem. I am very happy that I have this job, I can support my family and at the same time clear the fields and villages and save lives." Ponchan's family are farmers, she has four brothers but now she is the main bread-earner. They grow rice, vegetables and potatoes and have three cows, two buffalo and some chickens. They also breed fish in a bomb crater. "In a good year my family makes about 10,000,000 kip ($1000) but often it is more like 4,000,000." Ponchan's $95 a month salary goes a long way to help her family. "We don't have problems with money anymore, when we need soap or sugar we can buy it and we are saving up for a generator and a tractor."

It is hard work, but the team manages very well, even carrying 500-pound bombs between them in the sweltering heat. Over the following week three more bombs were found and hundreds of cluster bomblets were destroyed.

One of the aircraft bombs proved to be a big problem. It was too large (2000 pound) to move by hand and it was impossible to get a truck across the river, through the village and across the rice field to where the bomb lay. The experienced team leader, carefully supervised by the TFM, successfully used an explosive charge called a cracker barrel to blow the tail fuse off the bomb. This made the bomb safe to move.

An elephant called Bounmar was recruited for the job. The whole village watched with delight and amazement as Bounmar heaved the huge bomb across the rice field, through the village and across the river.

Back in the cave the village headman is very complimentary about MAG's work: "At last something is being done here to make this land safe. Unexploded bombs have killed ten people here. Just a few months ago a boy was killed in the village digging for crickets. When the war finished, this place was like the surface of the moon and now it has come back to life. But death still lurks under the ground. The team hear is changing people's lives. Every time we dig the rice paddies we have been afraid. Soon things will be different."

24 year-old Kam is the MAG technician with the villagers behind the mountain making sure that everyone is safe. She receives the 'all clear' on her walkie-talkie radio. Three of the bombs have either been made safe or destroyed. The people begin to file along the narrow path back to the village, children running ahead making clouds of dust. "This is a good day for the village," said 62 year-old Ngorn smiling, "A very good day."


MAG's work in Phanop village is funded by ECHO in partnership with CARE