Cambodia training elite squad of 15 African rats to sniff out landmines
Cambodia is training an elite squad of rats, imported from Africa, to sniff out landmines and other unexploded ordnance in the once-war-racked kingdom, authorities said.
A team of 15 rats, some weighing up to 1.2kg, were imported from Tanzania in April with the help of a Belgian non-governmental organisation that trains rats to sniff out mines, said Heng Ratana, director general of the Cambodian Mine Action Centre.
"If the rats pass the test, we will use them … if they are not qualified, we will end the programme," Heng Ratana said.
He said there had been claims of success in using rats to sniff landmines in several African countries including Tanzania, Mozambique and Angola.
The rats are now being trained by experts in Siem Reap province, home to Cambodia's famed Angkor temples complex.
But one of the rodents has already died, probably because of the change in climate, he said.
Experts plan to begin testing the rats over the next few weeks.
The rodents will be put through their paces on a number of tasks, including to establish whether they can sense all types of mine, whether they can detect buried ordnance and how fast they work, he said.
"They will test the rats in actual landmine fields," he said.
"At this stage, it is too early to say if we can use the rats," Heng Ratana said, adding that two Cambodian mine experts had been trained in Tanzania and they were now sharing their expertise with their colleagues.
Nearly three decades of civil war gripped Cambodia from the 1960s, leaving the poverty-stricken nation both one of the most heavily bombed and heavily mined countries in the world.
Last month, a new Cambodian underwater demining team pulled a US-made bomb from the Mekong River for the first time as the country battles the wartime legacy of unexploded mines that have killed thousands - detonating when trodden on.
Unexploded ordnance has killed nearly 20,000 people since 1979. According to Cambodian government statistics, 154 people were killed or injured by leftover mines last year, and 111 in 2013.
