HANOI (AFP) May 22, 2003 - More than 1,500 people were evacuated from their homes in central Vietnam after a family discovered a large, unexploded Vietnam War-era bomb while digging in their garden.

Fifteen army engineers were drafted in on Sunday to remove the 250-pound (113-kilogramme) bomb from a house in Dong Hoi town in Quang Binh province, Major Nguyen Thieu Hoc from the local army base said Wednesday.

"Given its size, this must have been dropped by an American B-52 during the war," he said.

Before removing the unexploded device residents living within a 500-metre radius of the house were evacuated.

"It took the army engineers about two hours to examine the bomb's detonation system. They then decided it was safe to transport it to the military zone 25 kilometres (15.5 miles) away where it was blown up," Hoc said.

Quang Binh, situated immediately north of the former demilitarized zone separating North and South Vietnam, was one of the most heavily bombed provinces during the "American" War.

Estimates from the US Pentagon and the Vietnamese defence ministry suggest there are between 315,000 and 720,000 tonnes of unexploded munitions lying across all or most of the country's 61 provinces.

A further three million landmines are also believed to litter the countryside.