Four fishermen were killed on the spot when an ammunition shell exploded in Vietnam's southern Kien Giang province, according to Vietnam News Agency on Thursday.

The explosion occurred on Wednesday afternoon when the men were sawing the shell they had found on the seabed in the island district of Phu Quoc. The victims include Ha Minh Duong, 26; Nguyen Van Toan, 34; Tran Manh Duc, 29; and Le Hoang Khem, 27.

According to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund of the United States, during the Vietnam War from 1965-1975, the U.S. Armed Forces deployed more than 15 million tons of bombs, mines, artillery shells and other ordnance in the country, in which ten percent did not detonate as designed.

Local scrap collectors often saw of unexploded ordnance (UXO) for metal and explosive, while small children play ammunitions by breaking them, resulting in hundreds of deaths and injuries annually.

Now, there are over 300,000 tons of UXO in Vietnam, estimated local officials.

Source: Xinhua