CAMBODIA DESTROYS HUGE WEAPONS HAUL, 2001-07-09 (photo)

A pyre of nearly 7,000 guns and other small arms burns before a crowd of some 400 government officials, diplomats, and curious onlookers in Kompong Chhnang province north of the capital of Phnom Penh on Monday, July 9, 2001. Cambodian authorities destroyed the weapons as part of an ongoing effort to rid Cambodia of illegal arms after a decades-long civil war, which ended in 1998, left the country awash with weapons. More than 100,000 guns and other weapons have been collected, and about half that number destroyed since the government began cracking down on illegal arms following the end of the civil war. HJ/RCS