ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - A man in Erbil province’s Bradost area lost a leg on Wednesday after a mine exploded on him as he was collecting plants, an official from the mine agency has confirmed to Rudaw.
Rabar Anwar, the head of media at Erbil Mine Action Center, told Rudaw on Wednesday that a mine exploded on the 30-year-old Sami Jawhar in the Bradost area, causing him to lose a leg.
The Iraqi Kurdistan Mine Action Agency (IKMAA) has recorded a total of 13,505 mine explosion incidents in the Kurdistan Region over recent decades, killing and injuring a number of people.
Earlier this month, Action on Armed Violence’s Explosive Violence Monitoring Project’s latest report found that Iraq saw an increase from 232 civilian casualties from explosive violence in 2020, to 600 in 2021 - a 159 percent rise.
According to Anwar, the mine in Bradost dates back to the Iraq-Iran war in the eighties. The man is a Peshmerga fighter and was out to collect spring plants, he added.
On April 4, Jabar Mustafa, head of IKMAA, told Rudaw Radio that the contamination of the Region’s land dates back to the sixties, and that 776 square kilometres of land has been contaminated with mines and remnants of war.
A number of mine action organisations, such as the Norwegian People’s Aid (NPA) and Mines Advisory Group (MAG), are working to clean contaminated areas in the Kurdistan Region.
Erbil Mine Action Center said in a statement later on Wednesday that they have launched “an intense campaign” in the Bradost area to warn locals about the danger of mines.
Last week, the United Nations Mine Action Service (UNMAS) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) released a joint statement calling for action to be taken towards an Iraq free of mines and explosive ordnance, stating that over 519 children have been killed or injured in Iraq over the last five years from explosive ordnance, and that landmines and explosive remnants of war remain one of the leading threats to children in the country.
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