MOSCOW. April 1 (Interfax) - Specialists from the Russian Defense Ministry's International Mine Action Center have returned to Russia after completing a humanitarian demining mission in Laos.
"An Ilyushin Il-76MD military transport aircraft of the Russian Aerospace Forces has brought a unit of 32 service members to the Chkalovsky military airfield. The plane crew has flown over 7,000 kilometers," the Defense Ministry said in a statement on Thursday.
During their mission to the Xiangkhouang province of Laos from November 2020 to March 2021, the Russian specialists cleared over 3,500 hectares of land and detected and defused over 1,000 explosive objects.
"Most of the munitions were U.S.-made BLU-26, BLU-63, and BLU-3/B cluster air bombs, anti-personnel mines, and artillery rounds," it said.
In addition, 30 Laotian service members have been trained to practically employ Russian sapper detection and protection equipment, it said.
"The arriving personnel have been subjected to the full set of sanitary-epidemiological procedures at the airfield," it said.