Experts have removed 31 bombs from a pit filled with abandoned Japanese chemical weapons and believe the cache near a school in China's northeast could hold more than 200 shells, a news report said yesterday.
The joint Chinese-Japanese team on Wednesday began excavating bombs and artillery shells that were buried after a factory received them as scrap metal.
Seven of the 31 bombs found were confirmed to hold poison gas, and the experts expected to find a total of more than 200 bombs, the official Xinhua news agency said.
Japan occupied China's northeast, also known as Manchuria, from 1933 until its wartime defeat in 1945. Tokyo says its retreating army left an estimated 700,000 shells with mustard gas and other poisons. China puts the number of abandoned weapons at 2 million, according to Xinhua.
Disposal of long-abandoned munitions is a rare point of agreement between the normally estranged Chinese and Japanese governments. An international agreement commits Tokyo to disposing of such weapons by next year. But the two governments want to extend that to 2012 because they have yet to destroy any weapons they have unearthed.
"We're not satisfied with the speed of processing the abandoned chemical weapons by the Japanese side in China," said Liu Yiren (
Japanese officials defended their handling of the weapons, saying they are asking the government for more money and staff.
"Basically, we are beefing up our efforts so that we can promptly respond to the issue. We are making efforts," said Keigo Akashi, official in charge of the issue for the Cabinet Office in Tokyo.
On Wednesday, Chinese and Japanese experts in protective suits carefully removed artillery shells and bombs from a shallow pit about 200m from a junior high school, where students played in an exercise yard.
Officials hoped to have the weapons excavated by next week and moved to a secure stockpile in preparation for destroying them, said Liu.
There are about 60 such sites in China, Liu said.
They are an enduring reminder and source of anger in China, where the government says at least 2,000 people have been killed by abandoned Japanese chemical weapons.
Abandoned chemical weapons "have been affecting the development of towns and cities where they are buried and threatening people's lives," Liu told reporters. In Ningan, "the local government has been presenting this issue repeatedly to the foreign ministry."
The bombs from Ningan are to be moved to a newly built disposal facility in Harbaling, a city in neighboring Jilin Province, where some 30,000 other chemical weapons already are stockpiled, Liu said.
In 2003, one person was killed and 43 others were injured when construction workers broke open a buried barrel of abandoned poison gas in Qiqihar, a city in Heilongjiang Province. It was the most serious incident in recent years.
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