Two months away from the end of a weapons amnesty during which people can hand over any illegally held arms for destruction without facing prosecution and close to 2000 guns have been already collected.

This is the second weapons amnesty which follows an earlier one in 2005-06 during which 3490 guns were handed in.

"As of March 28th Slovaks have surrendered 1973 guns and 15014 rounds of ammunition," said a police spokesman.

Of these number of guns 365 came from Bratislava region while the most rounds of ammunition - 3805 - were surrendered in Zilina region.

Among the handed-in weapons in both amnesties are historical and rare specimens many of which were dug up and date back to the 19th century as well as the First and Second World Wars. They include rifles, sub-machine and machine guns.

In the first amnesty a resident of Lucenec (Banska Bystrica) handed in 68 different guns (including automatics) while a Slovak from the district of Martin (Zilina region) brought 33 guns made in Russia.

(TASR, SLOVAKIA TODAY / ILLUSTRATION PHOTO)