Two people died when a Soviet-manufactured land mine exploded in a field in a western Angolan town, police said Thursday.
The device, which dated back to the 1980s, went off Wednesday in a mine field in Cubal, in an area where Cuban troops were based when they supported the Angolan regime against rebels at the time, according to police.
Cubal is some 100 kilometers (60 miles) southeast of Benguela, a port city in western Angola.
Cuban troops defended Benguela against incursions by South Africa's army during the apartheid regime.
Some 15 million land mines are buried in Angola's soil.
An estimated 100,000 people have been mutilated or lost limbs in land mine explosions since Angola's civil war broke out in 1975. Humanitarian groups put the civil war's death toll at 500,000 -- LUANDA (AFP)
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