Thanks chaps. So no fiddly cutting red and green wires and sweating any more. Just boom.
A later radio report said the thing our troops blew up was a rocket.
Well, here's the answer to the allegation they caused damage: they did no such thing and UN military Observers have backed them up. Perhaps the Afgah who complained will not now get the compensation he was aiming for?
A United Nations spokesman has backed up the New Zealand Defence Force's (NZDF) denial that New Zealand soldiers accidentally damaged what was left of the Bamiyan Buddha statues in Afghanistan.
The famous structures were blown up by the Taliban seven years ago, but two smaller statues survived.
An Afghan government official said that New Zealand troops blew up a historic wall and damaged a Buddha during an ammunition disposal exercise.
"The explosion has caused damage to the remains of one of the Buddhas," Najibullah Harar, head of the information and culture department in Bamiyan province, told AFP.
"It has also destroyed a historic wall around the smaller statue," Harar said.
The 38-metre statue once stood several metres from a 55-metre-tall statue, now also in pieces. Their destruction in 2001 has left behind two large niches.
"The explosion was against the standard norms of protecting historic heritages," Harar said.
The NZDF said the Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) had safely detonated an unexploded rocket in the vicinity of the statues and had not damaged the statues.
Brendan J Cassar, chief of Unesco's cultural programme in Afghanistan, which includes conservation of the World Heritage Site at Bamiyan, said a monitoring mechanism inside the niche where the statues once stood showed no change in pre-existing cracks.
"I'm informed by authorities in Kabul there was no visible damage," Mr Cassar said.
Major Martin O'Donnell, a Kabul-based spokesman for Nato's International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, concurred.
"There was no damage. The provincial governor and local authorities were all informed of the incident and of the plans (for the controlled explosion)."
A statement by the NZDF said the explosion was carried out after the unexploded rocket was found about 50m to the right of the small Buddha.
The 85mm high explosive anti-tank rocket was part of an unexploded ordnance cache found at the site reported to PRT members on April 30.
It said the rocket was buried at the foot of a bank which was a further 20m down the slope and was deemed too unsafe to transport away from the location or leave without attention.
Because it was close to the historic site the detonation was delayed so key people could be informed of the need to dispose of the rocket, the statement said. The Governor of the Province Habiba Sorabi, UN organisations and agencies and local police authorities were advised of the task.
"In conducting the demolition, fifteen full sandbags were placed onto the rocket to absorb blast and fragmentation. Post blast inspection revealed a crater approximately 400mm in diameter and 150mm deep," the statement said.
"It was considered highly unlikely that the ordnance could have inflicted any damage to the surrounding area.
"Further site inspections by Commander of the PRT Colonel Darryl Tracy and Head of the UN Mission in Bamiyan concluded there had been no damage to the Buddha."
The two statues, chiselled about 400m apart into a cliff face, were created about 1500 years ago when Bamiyan was a major centre for Buddhism.
The Taliban dynamited the Buddhas in March 2001, deeming them idolatrous and anti-Muslim. It was one of the regime's most widely condemned acts.
Since the fall of the Taliban regime in November 2001, international experts have made painstaking efforts to recover and piece together fragments of the Buddhas and stabilise the niches that remain.
Unesco has placed the entire Bamiyan Valley region on its World Heritage in Danger list. Planes are not allowed to fly over the area.
