Chinese People's Liberation Army Completes De-Mining Mission At Vietnamese Border- Reports

The Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) completed its mine clearance operation along the Vietnamese border, local media reported

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 26th October, 2018) The Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) completed its mine clearance operation along the Vietnamese border, local media reported.

According to the Xinhua news agency, as the PLA soldiers detonated on Thursday afternoon the last mine in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in southern China, they have completed their years-long de-mining campaign along the border with Vietnam.

"Landmines planted along the border have been plaguing local residents ... To completely root out the danger of landmines helps pave the way for regional peace and development," Huang Taifeng, a commander of the de-mining squad, said, as quoted by Xinhua.

According to the agency, upon their mission completion, the PLA soldiers ceremonially walked across a part of the minefield located in Guangxi Zhuang's city of Pingxiang and covering over 60,000 square meters (37.28 square miles), and then handed the mine-free field over to local citizens.

The locals claim that their lives have "returned to normal" since the beginning of the PLA mine clearance mission, while back in the 1990s they often suffered injuries in mine blasts.

Hundreds of thousands of mines were laid at the border during the 1979-1989 Chinese-Vietnamese conflicts. China has carried out three large scale de-mining missions since the early 1990s.