Twenty-five bombs abandoned by Japanese troops during World War II have been found in Hulin, a city in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, according to local sources.

The first bomb was identified by patrolling police when a student, surnamed Shan, was fiddling with a rusted bomb using an iron rod in front of a group of other children in the middle school of Xinle Village.

The police warned the student that the bomb had powder and a fuse and could explode. They then stopped the student immediately and took the bomb to a safer place.

According to Shan, the bomb was discovered by his father in a pool on Wednesday. Police got four other bombs at Shan's home later and 20 more in the pool.

Experts believed that the bombs were abandoned by Japanese troops.

Chinese official statistics show Japan abandoned at least 2 million tons of chemical weapons at about 40 sites in 15 Chinese provinces at the end of World War II, most of which are in the three northeast provinces of Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning.

China and Japan joined the United Nations Chemical Weapons Convention in 1997. Two years later, they signed a memorandum, under which Japan is obliged to remove weapons by April 2007 and provide all necessary funds, equipment and personnel for their retrieval and destruction.

However, the Japanese government has asked for an extension of the disposal deadline to April 2012.

(Xinhua News Agency April 9, 2007)