Chinese demining troops in Lebanon pass UNMACC examination

All the 60 demining officers and men of the 8th Chinese peacekeeping engineer battalion to Lebanon passed the qualification examination given jointly by the UN Mine Action Coordination Center (UNMACC) in Lebanon and the Lebanese government forces at the barracks of the Chinese peacekeeping troops in a village in southern Lebanon on the afternoon of March 17 with bettering five records in the examination.

According to Wang Jian, head of the Chinese peacekeeping force in Lebanon and commander of the engineer battalion, the 60 mine sweepers were selected from more than one thousand candidates, and all the mine-clearing backbones ever took part in the 3rd and 4th demining actions in Lebanon by the Chinese peacekeeping troops, boasting rich actual-combat experience.

It is learned that the 275 members of the 8th Chinese peacekeeping engineer battalion to Lebanon were mainly from an engineer regiment of the Chengdu Military Area Command of the Chinese People s Liberation Army and they will stay in southern Lebanon for 8 months to fulfill peacekeeping missions, including mine sweeping and explosive ordnance disposal, road construction, post-war reconstruction, and humanitarian relief actions.

The 60 de-mining soldiers in the battalion will carry out mine-clearing tasks in the most dangerous minefields marked with the "blue line."

By Wang Yanbo, Chen Zhi and Gao Xiaowen