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UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs |
IRAQ: More than one million mines and UXOs removed in north
ANKARA, 12 April 2004 (IRIN) - More than a million mines and items of unexploded ordnance (UXOs) have been cleared since July 2003 from northern Iraq by the Mines Advisory Group (MAG), a British NGO, operating in the country for more than a decade.
"We have good security monitoring and we follow strict security procedures. That has enabled us to clear a vast amount of units of unexploded ordnance," Tim Carstairs, aid worker with MAG, told IRIN from Manchester in northern England.
Following the fall of Saddam's regime, MAG has continued to conduct emergency activities in areas of northern Iraq formerly under Baghdad's control, while working to establish new programmes for mine and ordnance clearance in the south of the country.
"There is an urgent need for clearance in [the southern city of] Basra too and needs to be dealt with quickly. We were also working in Basra, but the project was stopped when funding ran out," he said.
The UK-based charity, operating in Iraq with up to 800 staff, is the only NGO specialised in mine clearance working in the north of the country since 1992 as part of the international humanitarian relief and rehabilitation efforts that followed the end of the first Gulf war in 1991.
MAG has been operating under difficult circumstances over the past six months. In September 2003, the NGO pulled back to the green line, the former front line between the government of Iraq and Kurdish Peshmerga forces, after a MAG worker was shot dead and another seriously injured while driving along a main road towards the city of Mosul.
After years of fighting between the Kurdish north and the regime of Saddam Hussein, as well as intra-Kurdish conflict and problems with neighbouring countries, the area is one of the most heavily mined in the Middle East. Most were laid following the Iran-Iraq war in the eighties and after the Gulf war the border areas became the most heavily mined and aid agencies such as the UN were prevented from working there.
Following the recent US-led war, mines were laid on roads specifically targeting civilians, causing deaths and serious injuries. According to MAG, more than 75 per cent of children's injuries are attributed to playing or tampering with UXOs.
"The latest Iraqi war had left behind a wide range of artillery, rockets, hand grenades, fuses, machine guns with ammunition still in them, mines and cluster bombs. There is also a huge amount of ordnance left in Iraq in terms of stockpiles not used by the Iraqis during the recent war," Carstairs explained.
There have been a significant number of deaths caused by mine/UXO related incidents; between January and December 2003 1,190 people were killed, compared to 212 in 2001, according to the MAG aid worker.
But the NGO is optimistic. He asserted that there were good indications that the number of casualties would decrease this year if demining work continued at the present rate.
Observers estimate the number of mines and units of UXOs to be 10 million just in the north of the country alone, which could take up to 15 years to clear under UN standards.
Themes: (IRIN) Conflict, (IRIN) Human Rights
[ENDS]
This material comes to you via IRIN, a UN humanitarian information unit, but may not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations or its agencies. If you re-print, copy, archive or re-post this item, please retain this credit and disclaimer. Quotations or extracts should include attribution to the original sources. All materials copyright © UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 2004
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