The Blast Resuscitation and Victim Assistance (BRAVA) team from the US Naval Hospital in Okinawa, Japan and the Tripler Army Medical center in Hawaii landed in Hanoi late Monday, an embassy spokeswoman said.

During their 20-day humanitarian mission, the physicians will perform between three and four major operations on blast victims each day at two hospitals in Hanoi and provide trauma care.

"This will be the first time that a US BRAVA team has provided training and conducted a major humanitarian operation in Vietnam," the embassy said in a statement last week.

"This visit is a step forward in developing more substantive bilateral defence relations between the United States and Vietnam."

Formal US-Vietnam relations were only established in 1995, a year after president Bill Clinton lifted a trade embargo on the Southeast Asian nation.

Relations between the former military foes remain lukewarm, however, with Hanoi particularly suspicious of what it considers Washington's imperialist global foreign policy.

At least 18 people have been killed and scores more injured in Vietnam so far this year from landmines and unexploded ordnance.

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.

WAR.WIRE