Chinese Foreign Ministry said Wednesday that the Japanese government will dispatch an expert team to excavate and retrieve the chemical weapons abandoned by the Japanese troops in Qiqihar of northeast China's Heilongjiang Province during the World War II.

The ministry said in a news release that the excavation and retrieval work will start from June 16 and experts from the Chinese side will offer assistance.

The weapons will be temporarily kept in a special storeroom in Qiqihar after being excavated and sealed, the ministry said. They will be destroyed when a professional destruction center is ready in the city, the ministry said.

Reports said dozens of bombs along with several suspected gas bombs, discarded by Japanese invaders in World War II, were found on May 23 in the city's Angangxi District. The locals had been transferred by the local police and no victims were reported so far.

Statistics showed that some 2,000 Chinese have so far become victims of the discarded chemical weapons after the war was over. In Qiqihar alone, eight incidents involving Chinese becoming victims of Japanese chemical weapons have taken place since the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949.