See the lethal legacy of the U.S.'s secret war in Laos

U.S. has a 'moral obligation' to help Laos.

Acknowledging the scars of a secret war, U.S. President Barack Obama on Tuesday said the United States has a "moral obligation" to help this isolated southeast Asian nation heal and vowed to reinvigorate relations with a country with rising strategic importance to the U.S.

Too few Americans know of the United States' covert bombing of Laos. 

Making the first visit by a sitting U.S. president, Obama said too few Americans know of the United States' covert bombing of Laos during the Vietnam War. As a first sign of a new relationship, Obama announced he would double spending for unexploded ordnance, committing $90 million US over the next three years.

More than 1.8 million tonnes of bombs dropped on Laos.

For nine years, the U.S. conducted a punishing, covert bombing campaign on landlocked Laos in an effort to cut off communist forces in neighbouring Vietnam.

The small nation was bombarded with more than 1.8 million tonnes of ordnance, more than "we dropped on Germany and Japan, combined, in all of World War II," Obama said.

Obama stops short of apologizing. 

Still, Obama offered no apologies, calling the campaign and its aftermath reminders that "whatever the cause, whatever our intentions, war inflicts a terrible toll."

A legacy of unexploded bombs and decades of cleanup. 

The bombing, from 1964 to 1973, left behind deep scars, millions of unexploded cluster bombs across the countryside and decades-worth of cleanup.

Scrap metal from the bombs are now a part of everyday life.

The remnants of the bombing campaign, along with the remains of the bombs themselves, are still scattered throughout the small southeast Asian nation. Above, a bomb is used to grow plants in the village of Ban Napia, while the unexploded bomb below serves as a decoration for a hotel in Xieng Khouang province. 

This man makes spoons by melting the bombs dropped by U.S. Air Force planes during the Vietnam War.